The bears didn’t want to stop last Friday as the dollar extended its losses against its major counterparts. As EUR/USD get 131 pips higher and GBP/USD get 76 pips.
While the news report, retail sales were up 0.9% last month, which is better than the 0.7%, a big chunk of the increase is due to the big rise in oil prices in August. As a matter of fact, excluding gas station sales, retail sales was only up 0.3%!
In other news, headline CPI showed a 0.6% increase in prices in August following the 0.0% reading in July. Meanwhile, core CPI only showed a 0.1% increase, which once again proves that gas prices were responsible for a good portion of the change in headline CPI.
We got one last surprise from the University of Michigan, which revealed that consumer sentiment is at its highest level in 5 years! According to the consumer sentiment index (which rose from 74.3 to 79.2), Americans are more upbeat because they're optimistic about the job situation. In any case, it'll be interesting to see if these gains can be sustained in the coming months.
Today, we only have the Empire State manufacturing index on tap at 12:30 pm GMT. Look for it to post a reading of -1.9, down from -5.9 the previous month.
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