The major event during the past trading week was the monetary policy decision of the European Central Bank. It overshadowed even the very important US non-farm payrolls, sending the euro higher. The shared 19-nation currency jumped more than 2 percent against its major peers over the week.
The ECB was holding the policy meeting on Thursday, and it should have been detrimental to the euro as the vast majority of market analysts had expected additional stimulus from the central bank. While the ECB did indeed add stimulating measures, it significantly underdelivered, refraining from cutting the main interest rate and expanding the asset purchase program. As a result, the currency of the eurozone posted huge gains after the policy announcement.
Another important event was the release of US employment data that showed substantial growth of the jobs market. Yet it was overshadowed by the news from Europe, having muted impact on the Forex market and providing very limited support to the US dollar. It is worth to note, though, that now experts believe that there is almost 80 percent probability of monetary tightening from the Federal Reserve this month.
EUR/USD surged from 1.0588 to 1.0874, touching the weekly high of 1.0981. EUR/JPY climbed from 130.04 to 133.94. EUR/GBP soared from 0.0704 to 0.7197.
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