The euro today struggled to rally against the US dollar despite the release of robust Eurozone GDP growth data for Q3 2017 in the early European session. The EUR/USD currency pair was weighed down by the higher demand for the US dollar among market participants, which drove the pair lower.
The EUR/USD currency pair was trading in a 30-point range for most of today’s session having hit a daily high of 1.1806 in the Asian session and a low of 1.1774 in the mid-European session.
The release of the robust Eurozone GDP data for the third quarter by Eurostat in the early European session could not reverse the currency pair’s downtrend. The GDP figures indicated that Eurozone economies expanded by 0.6% on a quarterly basis in line with expectations, and by an annualized 2.6%, which was higher than the market consensus of 2.5% anualized growth. The overall tax-to-GDP ratio in the Eurozone released today was slightly higher coming at 40% in the European Union as compared to the previous 39.7%.
The release of the US initial jobless claims data by the Department of Labor triggered a brief rally in the pair. The weekly claims were recorded at 236,000, which was lower than the expected 240,000. The US dollar was largely stronger than the euro as evidenced by the US Dollar Index, which hit a high of 93.80.
The currency pair’s future performance is likely to be impacted by Mario Draghi‘s speech at 16:00 GMT as well as tomorrow’s Non-farm payroll data.
The EUR/USD currency pair was trading at 1.1795 as at 14:59 GMT having rallied from a low of 1.1774. The EUR/JPY currency pair was trading at 132.88 having recovered from a low of 132.55.
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