Except for the Japanese Yen, the FX market has been relatively calm on the first day of this week. The most silent cross was EUR/USD, which lost just 0.04% despite a broad presence of speakers from the Federal Open Market Committee.
Largely positive statistics from the Euro area resulted in gains for the common currency on Friday of the previous week.
Five out of seven major currency pairs with the Euro were down on Thursday. Only EUR/CAD added 0.34%, while EUR/CHF appreciated by 0.17%.
The US Federal Reserve turned hawkish in its accounts of the April meeting. While some members of the FOMC committee are still worried about downside risks to the economy, the general view across the table suggests that the policymakers are getting ready to hike interest rates next month, if economic data continues to be solid.
Encouraging US consumer price figures prompted some weakness in terms of the Euro's value against the Greenback on Tuesday.
Potential intervention of the Bank of Japan has negatively weighed on the national currency of this country. Speculations sent the Yen down by 0.46% against the Euro.
While the Japanese Yen failed to sustain a rally against the US Dollar on Friday amid positive fundamentals from the world's largest economy, the Asian currency was up the most against the Euro.
Only two currency pairs of the Euro gained ground on Thursday, with EUR/AUD adding 0.25% and EUR/JPY increasing by ten basis points.
Despite growing commodity prices, only the New Zealand Dollar managed to increase in value on May 11 among all oil-dependent currencies, and even here an appreciation was caused by news outside of the commodity topic.
The Euro was forced to diminish for a sixth trading session in a row on Tuesday of this week, as European fundamentals were not in a position to support any kind of growth.
Provided with rising expectations that the Federal Reserve may increase interest rates as soon as June and increasing energy prices, the Euro managed to appreciate against the Japanese Yen and commodity currencies on Monday.
While substantially lowering its inflation forecast, the Reserve Bank of Australia sent the national currency down by 1.31% against the Euro on Friday.
While two days ago the Euro surged against all but one currency, yesterday the tendency was reversed fully around.
The European single currency was up the most against the Canadian Dollar on Wednesday. This is the only component, which surpassed the 1% mark and stopped growing at 1.06%.
The Australian Dollar crushed by 2.11% against the Euro yesterday, after the Reserve Bank of Australia surprisingly decided to curb the key interest rate to 1.75% from 2%.
The Euro remained on the topside against all major currencies but the Australian Dollar (-0.07%), although a considerable surge with respect to this South Pacific currency is expected on Tuesday amid a decision of the Reserve Bank of Australia to cut interest rates by 25 basis points.
With growing risk-averse market sentiment and declining oil prices, the Euro turned to become one of the best-performing currencies on Friday of the previous week.
The Japanese Yen posted a colossal 2.77% spike in value against the Euro on Thursday after the Bank of Japan decided to stay on hold and keep interest rates unchanged. Along with that, the QE programme's volume remained stable at 80 trillion yen per year.
Wednesday was fully packed with different fundamental data releases and statistical development around the globe helped the Euro to become one of the best-performing currencies across the board.
All data but US Services PMI was largely disappointing on Tuesday, taking into consideration major regions worldwide. Europe has not been the largest data generator, with only some speeches of ECB officials included in the economic calendar.
Monday used to be a largely bullish day for the common European currency, owing to disappointing fundamentals outside of Europe, falling commodity prices and depressed equity markets.
Friday's statistics from the Euro zone was largely disappointing and this was very well reflected in performance of the single European currency, because it retreated against all but two G9 currencies on a day-to-day basis.
Oil prices were down by more than two percent on Thursday, as they dragged the majority of commodity-linked currencies lower.
The European single currency traded in a mixed environment against other G9 components, while preparing for the ECB meeting later today.