Now that’s how you bust out of a losing streak! After 5 straight days of losses, the euro finally edged higher yesterday, as EUR/USD closed 1.2960, 58 pips above its opening price.
The euro benefited from a combination of factors, which were mainly good economic data and overall dollar weakness.
Spanish GDP figures came in slightly better than anticipated, as the Spanish economy shrank by just 0.3%, as opposed to the expected 0.4% contraction. Yes, it is still a contraction, but we’ll take any good news that we can get!
The Italian bond auctions were also somewhat successful, as the Italians were able to sell 7 billion EUR worth of bonds at slightly lower yields.
It wasn’t all good news though, as we saw poor labor data from Germany. We saw job cuts of 20,000 last month, which was twice the anticipated 10,000 figure. This was just another set of data that shows weakness in the Germany economy.
For today, we’ve got a slew of second tier data headed our way, so it’s time to put on those trading gloves and get to work!
First, German retail sales figures are due at 7:00 am GMT, with expectations being that we’ll see a slight 0.4% increase.
Later on at 10:00 am GMT, the euro zone CPI and unemployment rate reports are scheduled to hit the markets. Inflation is expected to remain subdued at 2.5% while the unemployment rate is projected to remain steady at 11.4%.
While these reports aren’t normally high impact reports, if any of the releases come in drastically different from expectations, it could trigger some wild moves on euro pairs. That said, good luck trading today, homies!