The US dollar jumped today after data showed an increase of retail sales. There were bad reports too, adding to uncertainty about the next week’s monetary policy decision of the Federal Reserve.
Retail sales grew 0.7 percent, exceeding analysts’ expectations of 0.6 percent by a small degree. At the same time, unemployment claims jumped sharply from 300,000 to 368,000 during last week.
Next week’s Fed policy meeting is the major topic of discussion among Forex market participants. Some say that constant signs of improving situation with employment should encourage the US central bank to remove part of stimulus. Others argue that the decline of unemployment has happened because of shrinking pool of working force, not necessarily because the actual number of unemployed people is falling. Whatever the case, the Fed members will meet just in a week and the way policy makers think will become apparent then.
EUR/USD was down from 1.3785 to 1.3753 and GBP/USD dropped from 1.6371 to 1.6350 as of 21:48 GMT today. USD/JPY went higher from 102.41 to 103.35.
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