The number of unemployment claims fell to 353K, much better than expected. Durable goods orders numbers were mixed. Headline orders leaped by 1.6%, while core durable goods orders fell by 1.1%.
Jobless claims were expected to slide from 388K (revised up from 386K) to 381K. Durable goods orders were expected to rise by 0.4% while core orders to tick up by 0.1%.
The fall in jobless claims is probably due to seasonal adjustments that didn’t work out so well in this month of July. This is the second time that claims plunge to these levels: two weeks ago they did the same, but came back up afterwards. Also this will probably prove to be an outlier.
The dollar is stronger after these releases: rising against the yen and the euro. Update: the euro quickly recovered from the initial fall and is now resuming its rise.
Earlier, the euro and other risk currencies jumped against the dollar in response to hopeful words by Mario Draghi. The president of the ECB said that his institution would do anything to preserve the euro.
Later, the US will release the pending home sales report. See how to trade this event with USD/JPY.
