The US data remained robust with initial jobless claims increasing only slightly to 239,000 in the latest week from 234,000 previously which still indicated a strong labour market with layoffs remaining at low levels. There was a small decline in housing starts to an annual rate of 1.25mn from 1.28mn previously while permits rose to 1.29mn from 1.23mn.
There was also a strong reading for the February Philadelphia Fed manufacturing survey which increased to 43.3 from 23.6 and the highest reading for over 30 years, although the prices indices declined slightly on the month.
Fed Vice Chair Fischer backed Yellen’s stance on policy with expectations of further increase in rates and markets will continue to monitor comments in order to assess the potential for a rate hike at the March meeting. The dollar pushed higher immediately after the data, but was again unable to gain any traction and the Euro resisted any significant selling. Overall, the Euro rallied to the 1.0680 area as the dollar’s trade-weighted index declined by around 0.60%.
Data Day Despite salient data already having been published in China and France so far this morning, we are far from finished with the deluge of data due to reach the market today. The most important of which will be those that we have signposted in earlier briefings: Eurozone and US inflation figures. Given just […]
UK Labour market The Bank of England yesterday broke cover to drive the message home that due to the UK’s labour market remaining tight, it was premature to start talking interest rate cuts and it was not just Governor Bailey who was calling for higher for longer interest rates but also his MEPC colleague Jonathan […]
An interesting day for EURUSD Taken in isolation, many of the events scheduled for today might be thought insufficient to threaten EURUSD. However, together, the concoction of releases concerning the currencies on either side of this pair could make for interesting trading during today’s session. Foremost on the list will be the Fed minutes. As […]