The euro stayed in a rather boring sideways market against the US dollar during the early European session today. Everything changed when the US employment report has been released. It showed some mixed data, which pushed the EUR/USD pair first up, then down, then up and down again, producing a significant volatility burst. However, it failed to produce any meaningful trend in the Forex pairs.
Nonfarm payrolls rose by 223k in April — quite close to the value estimated by the market experts (228k). Unfortunately, March’s increase of 126k was revised down to just 85k. At the same time, the unemployment rate ticked down from 5.5% to 5.4%. Another worrying aspect of this payrolls report was a slow growth of the average hourly earnings, which added only 0.1% in April — below 0.2% forecast. March’s earnings increase was also revised — from 0.3% to 0.2%. (Event A on the chart.)
Wholesale inventories did not disappoint the dollar bulls today. They rose by just 0.1% in March, in place of 0.3% promised by the forecasts. Additionally, February’s change was revised down from 0.3% to 0.2%. (Event B on the chart.)
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