Weekly US jobless claims dropped by 6,000 to 312K, a minor surprise and in line with previous weeks’ numbers. US weekly jobless claims were expected to stand at 316K, very similar to last week’s announcement of 317K (now revised up to 318K). This indicator has been quite steady of late. Continuing claims are improving nicely as well, with 2.561 million. This figure had a hard time breaking below 3 million. The 4 week moving average stands at just under 312K.
The dollar has been on the back foot, after markets’ belated reaction to the FOMC. EUR/USD traded around 1.3622, GBP/USD at 1.7034, very close to the post crisis high and USD/JPY was around 1.01.80. — more coming —
The Fed made no change to policy and Yellen reiterated that everything depends on the data. A rate hike will happen when it will happen, and that isn’t getting closer.
The higher inflation rate was dismissed by the Fed Chair as “noisyâ€.
