EUR/USD climbed as most economic reports released from the United States today were worse than market participants had counted on. The currency pair was moving higher even as the euro remained under pressure from speculations that the European Central Bank will ease its monetary policy on coming Wednesday.
Initial jobless claims edged higher from 272k to 278k last week while experts had predicted them to stay basically unchanged. (Event A on the chart.)
Nonfarm productivity fell 2.2% in Q4 2015 compared to the predicted drop of 3.2% and the decline of 3.0% during the previous reporting period. (Event A on the chart.)
Final Markit services PMI dropped from 53.2 in January to 49.7 in February. It was in line with market expectations and stayed almost the same as the preliminary reading. (Event B on the chart.)
ISM services PMI was virtually unchanged at 53.4% in February and also close to the forecasts which were pointing at about 53.2%. (Event C on the chart.)
Factory orders rose 1.6% in January after falling 2.9% in December. Analysts had promised a bigger increase in the neighborhood of 2.1%. (Event C on the chart.)
Yesterday, a couple of reports were released. (Not shown on the chart.)
ADP employment climbed by 214k in February, exceeding the median forecast of 185k and the January’s negatively revised reading of 193k.
Crude oil inventories climbed by 10.4 million barrels last week to yet another record. That is compared to the forecast increase of 2.5 million and the prior week’s gain of 3.5 million. Total motor gasoline inventories fell by 1.5 million barrels last week but remained well above the upper limit of the average range.
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