Lower prices at the pump probably help: US consumer confidence as measured by UoM jumped to 98.2 points. The “current conditions†figure jumped to 91.6 points. The “expectations†component leaped to 108.3 from 86.4 points beforehand.
The dollar is stronger against the yen and also against some other currencies.
Update: EUR/USD < 1.15 – surrenders to huge pressure and trips stops
Update: EUR/USD also continues lower after the breakdown seen beforehand. The pair is now trading at 1.1531.
Consumer confidence is not always correlated to actual spending by consumers: the last retail sales report was very disappointing. Either they stay disconnected, confidence is corrected to the downside or sales to the upside. Which one is it? At the moment this disconnect leaves opens questions.
The University of Michigan / Reuters consumer sentiment figure was expected to advance to 94.2 points in January from 93.6 points in December. Lower oil prices were part of the elevated expectations. This is the preliminary release for January.
Market turmoil continues after the SNBomb.
Earlier, US inflation numbers were quite mixed with a better headline number and a lower core number. The markets are still digesting the Swiss move yesterday.
Here is the preview: trading the consumer confidence with EURUSD.
