EUR/USD reached a new absolute maximum value today not so long after the opening of the European trading session. It touched 1.5626 and then traded slightly below that level. Bad economic news from the U.S. failed to move the currency pair upwards. EUR/USD even started to correct after those releases.
Retail sales in February dropped 0.6%, while the retail sales excluding the motor vehicles and parts dropped 0.2% in the same period. A growth by 0.2% was expected for both of these indicators.
Initial jobless claims in the last week were at 353k unchanged from the previous weekly report and just a bit lower than the expected 355k value.
Export prices were up by 0.5% in February, while import prices gained 0.6%, losing some of the Januarys pace, when they increased 0.8% and 0.7% respectively.
Business inventories in January increased by 0.8% compared with the previous month (inventories gained 0.6% in December 2007). The market analysts expected a 0.5% growth in January.
