EURUSD is consolidating; investors are monitoring the unfolding situation. The major currency pair remains stable on Thursday. The current quote for the instrument is 1.0168. The currency market volatility is extremely low – investors aren’t willing to expend their energy in responding to the events they are usually interested in. However, it’s quite okay for the second half of August, when a lot of market players are on holidays.
Yesterday, the US reported on Retail Sales for July, which didn’t change against the expected reading of 0.1% m/m. The June data was revised downwards, from 1.1% m/m to 0.8% m/m. from May to July, the indicator added 9.2% y/y. At the same time, Core Retail Sales gained 0.4% m/m, which is also quite good.
It’s clear why retail sales are under pressure – inflation is rising and making goods and services more expensive. Another Q2 GDP estimate from the Euro Area showed 0.6% q/q, which is worse than the expected reading of 0.7% q/q. Still, the data is rather neutral, because it’s not final.
In the FOMC Meeting Minutes published yesterday, the regulator said that it was in no hurry to draw any conclusions about the CPI slowdown and to become less aggressive when it comes to further rate hikes. The Fed wants to see the August CPI report before revising its monetary strategy with a 75-point hike. For the “greenback”, this is rather neutral news.
