The market reacted quite cautiously yesterday to data on the number of applications for unemployment benefits in the US, although the data were better than expected. Thus, the number of initial applications decreased from 238, 000 to 236, 000, and repeated from 1,960, 000 to 1,908, 000. It is evident that everyone is waiting for today's data from the US Department of Labor. Against this background, the single European currency could not even take advantage of the acceleration of economic growth from 2.3% to 2.6% in the eurozone, which was better than preliminary estimates. But the pound rose quite well, as it was reported that the UK and Ireland had almost reached an agreement on the final delimitation of the border. Of course, no documents have been signed yet, but investors took this news positively.
Although the main news of the day is the publication of the report of the US Department of Labor, before this, data on industrial production in the UK will be published. It is projected that growth rates will accelerate from 2.5% to 3.5%, but they are unlikely to affect the pound. At most, they can mitigate the negative consequences if the report of the Ministry of Labor will be positive. If the state of the labor market frightens investors, the pound will be able to grow stronger. The Ministry of Labor itself expects that the unemployment rate will remain the same, and that the number of new jobs will be 200, 000. This, of course, is less than 261, 000 a month earlier, but still very good result. Given that the stable state of the key indicators is expected, investors can catch on with data on wages, the growth rate of which should grow from 2.4% to 2.7%. This indicates the further growth of consumer activity and can remove all doubts about the decision of the Fed at the refinancing rate.
The euro/dollar is likely to fall to 1.1700.
The pound/dollar pair is expected to decline to 1.3400.
