Macroeconomic reports released from the United States over the current trading session were mostly bad, leading to weakness of the US dollar against its major counterparts.
The Markit services index fell below the neutral 50.0 level, indicating decline of the sector, for the first time in almost two and a half years. While the ISM services report showed a better picture as the index stayed above 50.0, the employment component of the data demonstrated contraction — a disturbing sign ahead of non-farm payrolls released later this week.
Talking about employment, yesterday’s report from Automatic Data Processing showed solid growth that beat expectations. On the other hand, today’s data showed an unexpected increase of unemployment claims. Now, traders wait for the NFP due to release on Friday. Forecasters predict it to show a substantial gain by 195,000.
EUR/USD rallied from 1.0867 to 1.0938 as of 17:16 GMT today, touching the high of 1.0972 intraday. GBP/USD was up from 1.4076 to 1.4140. USD/JPY attempted to rally from 113.46 to 114.26 but failed and has retreated to 113.60.
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