EUR/USD
On Thursday, as we expected, macroeconomic indicators in Europe were worse than expected and put pressure on the euro. The final assessment of business activity in the eurozone services sector for March was 54.9 points against the previous estimate of 55.0 points. Retail sales in the euro area in February grew by only 0.1% against expectations of 0.6%.
The US session was disappointed with the trade balance for February - the negative balance increased from -56.7 billion dollars to -57.6 billion - this is the worst figure since October 2008. But investors rightly judged that it is for this reason that Trump's protectionist stance in favor of American trade, and the first results can only be seen from the April trade balance data, which will only come out in June.
Over the past week, 242,000 applications for unemployment benefits were filed, which is higher than the projected 225,000, but on the other hand, the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits fell from 1.872 million to 1.808 million, 41, 000 lower than the forecast. These allow us to expect the best figures for new jobs outside the agricultural sector than forecast: the projection is 188, 000 against 313, 000 in February. The overall unemployment rate is expected to decrease from 4.1% to 4.0%. The average hourly wage for March is expected to increase by 0.3% after 0.1% in February. The volume of consumer lending in February is projected at $ 15.3 billion compared to $ 13.9 billion a month earlier.
Expect the euro to fall in the range of 1.2155/65 with an eye on 1.2090.
