020 7898 0500It was a good day for the US dollar yesterday as it made gains against sterling and the euro. However, it is worth noting that this was almost exclusively a result of events overseas, as the ECB quantitative easing programme announcement caused the euro to hit a three-week low against the greenback.
In addition, extremely poor UK retails sales figures caused the pound to tumble. There has been a relatively consistent run of positive economic data coming from the US of late – what a topsy turvy world we live in right now – although a few bits came slightly below expectations yesterday. Pending home sales stayed the same against an expectation of a 0.2% increase, while initial jobless claims came in at 233,000 against an expectation of 235,000. However, none of this affected the dollar given the releases from elsewhere.
Today sees the release of US GDP growth which will be extremely interesting. It is expected to increase by 2%, but there has been so much surprising data of late that, frankly, any figure could come out.
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