The euro attempted to rally today but reversed movement against most of its rivals later, erasing gains against some of them outright. Traders remained cautious about the ongoing US-China trade conflict, while mixed macroeconomic data was not helping the currency either.
The day started with a positive data in Germany as Destatis reported that the consumer price index rose 1.0% in April from the previous month — the same as in March and in line with expectations. The growth was driven mainly by the rise of prices for package holidays. The wholesale price index rose 0.6% in April. That was a faster rate of growth than 0.3% registered in March and above the market consensus of 0.4%.
Alas, the rest of Tuesday’s data was not nearly as good. The ZEW Indicator of Economic Sentiment for Germany dropped from 3.1 in April to -2.1 in May. The main reason for the drop were concerns about escalation of the trade conflict between the United States and China. The indicator for the whole eurozone tumbled from 4.5 to -1.6. Ahead of the report, analysts were promising an improvement for both indicators, to 5.1 and 5.0 respectively.
Eurozone industrial production fell 0.3% in March from February, the same as in the preceding month and in line with expectations.
EUR/USD was up from 1.1224 to 1.1244 intraday but retreated to 1.1207 by 22:06 GMT today. EUR/JPY rose from 122.69 to 123.39 during the Tuesday’s session but pulled back to 122.85 later. EUR/CHF traded at 1.1300 after rallying from 1.1293 to 1.1329 earlier.
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