The US Dollar (USD) remains resilient early Friday after rising against major rivals on Thursday. Later in the day, S&P Global will release preliminary reports on manufacturing and services PMIs for Germany, the UK, the eurozone and the US for June. Ahead of the weekend, market participants will also keep a close eye on May US existing home sales data and May Canadian retail sales data. EUR/USD returned to familiar technical levels on Thursday, falling towards 1.0700 after a miss in US economic data supported the dollar.
Germany’s Producer Price Index (PPI) fell to 0.0% month-on-month in May, down from the previous reading of 0.2% and missing the expected rise to 0.3%. On an annualized basis, the PPI was also below expectations, falling to -2.2% for the year ending in May. While the annualized figure improved from the previous reading of -3.3%, it still fell short of the projected recovery to -2.0%.
The latest US initial jobless claims data came in above expectations: 238,000 people applied for unemployment benefits in the week ended June 14, up from the previous week’s revised figure of 243,000. The increase also pushed the four-week average to 242,750 from the previous 227,250.
The Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing sector business activity index for June fell to 1.3 from 4.5, falling short of the expected 5.0. In addition, U.S. housing starts in May fell to 1.277 million new units, down from the forecast of 1.37 million and the previous month’s revised figure of 1.352 million.
