Some disappointing news from the US: retail sales dropped 0.8%. Excluding autos, it’s down 0.9%, but excluding auto and gas, it’s actually rising: 0.2%. This means that lower gas prices weighed on the volume of retail sales. However, also jobless claims disappointed with a rise of 25K to 304K. Continuing claims are down to 2.354 million, and that’s some good news.
The US dollar is falling: EUR/UDS is up to 1.1370, USD/JPY slides to 119.32, GBP/USD is approaching 1.54, USD/CAD trades at 1.2530, and AUD/USD is touching 0.77.
The markets are not impressed from the small rise in ex autos, ex gas retail sales. The combination of weak headline retail sales and rise in jobless claims sends the dollar lower.
The US was expected to report drop of 0.4% in retail sales in both the headline retail sales and in the core number for the month of January 2015. Last month, we had a bitter disappointment with a drop of 0.9% in headline sales. Jobless claims carried expectations for a small rise to 282K from 278K reported.
The dollar was somewhat weaker towards the publication.
Before the publication, EUR/USD ticked up to 1.1335, GBP/USD traded much higher at 1.5360, USD/JPY around 119.80, USD/CAD at 1.2550, AUD/USD around 0.7677 and NZD/USD around 0.7375.
The big news of the day was an announcement of a ceasefire in Ukraine. This weakened the Swiss franc. It’s still to be seen if the ceasefire holds. Greece is still awaiting a solution.
More: Where To Sell EUR/USD, AUD/USD, & To Buy USD/CAD? – UBS
