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Over the past two weeks, the Euro has appreciated against the greenback by 2.79% to 1.0898. Two significant events took place between the 17th and 30th of April upon which the British and European currencies both strengthened against the US dollar.
On the 18th of April, the British pound became the driving force behind all currencies. By the end of the day, the GBP/USD rate had jumped by 400 pips to 1.2903. The closing of short positions on this instrument was triggered by British Prime Minister Theresa May’s announcement of a snap election on the 8th of June this year.
The Euro followed the pound upwards but due to a fall on the EUR/GBP cross, the Euro’s growth against the dollar was 4 times smaller than that of the pound. The Euro the closed the gap of the 24th of April, breaking 1.0900 in the wake of Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the first round of France’s presidential election. The morning gap was 195 pips.
On Friday, trading on the Euro closed slightly up. It traded within a range of about 100 pips. The Euro’s rally was brought about in the first half of the day by some positive inflation data from the Eurozone and disappointing GDP figures from the UK.
Inflation almost reached its target of 2.0% for the year. It will now be difficult for the ECB to justify the continuation of their quantitative easing program. The EUR/USD rose to the 1.0947 mark during the European session; a whole 90 pips higher than the Asian minimum of 1.0857.
The EUR/GBP pair has renewed its weekly minimum at the beginning of the European session, and subsequently restored to 0.8462 after the UK’s disappointing GDP data release.
After the publication of consumer confidence and GDP reports in the US, the Euro lost half of its daily gains. The reports came out worse than expected. According to news reports, traders had been focusing their attention on the GDP price index, which came out at 2.3% against a forecast of 2.0% and a previous reading of 2.1%. I believe that interest in the Euro has abated due to the May holidays.
