020 7898 0500It was an odd day for the euro, but European Central Bank President Mario Draghi will likely be happy with the sharp weakness the single currency experienced against the dollar. The eurozone’s export growth has been affected by its strength against the greenback, so a weaker euro will help. It did climb higher against the euro following disappointing economic data from the UK but this isn’t quite as important to Draghi.
There were no releases of note from the eurozone yesterday and so movements were always going to be dominated by events elsewhere, as well as expectations that the ECB will keep interest rates on hold for the foreseeable future.
Today we will see the eurozone’s GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2018. It is expected to fall to 0.4% from 0.6% the quarter before and it will be fascinating to see how it compares with the UK’s extremely disappointing release last week. We will also see the unemployment rate for March which is expected to hold steady at 8.5%.
