The euro dropped today as investors were fleeing bonds of Europe’s peripheral economies, adding to pressure on the European Central Bank to stimulate the struggling economy. The currency was heading for a second weekly loss versus the US dollar and the Japanese yen, and it will be the third week of decline against the Great Britain pound.
Securities of such countries as Greece and Portugal were losing value as investors had lack of confidence in the countries’ economic performance. The surplus of the eurozone trade balance barely changed in March, being at â¬15.2 billion, while economists expected an increase to â¬17.3 billion. Today’s worse-than-expected data followed yesterday’s disappointing economic growth report. On top of that, French non-farm payrolls fell 0.1 percent in the first quarter of 2014, following the increase by the same rate in the previous quarter, and declined 0.4 percent from a year ago.
With all the bad news, it is really not a surprise that the shared 18-nation currency is so weak. Some people might argue that the decline is overextended and the currency should bounce in the near future, yet for now it does not look like that the currency is ready to halt its drop.
EUR/USD was down from 1.3708 to 1.3697 as of 18:07 GMT today. EUR/JPY declined from 139.28 to 138.97. EUR/GBP dropped from 0.8163 to 0.8141.
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