- Peter Praet, ECB executive board member
Wednesday's disappointing news from the United States were unable to get either side of the most traded currency pair moving, while the pair was poised to end the week above 1.37. Nevertheless, Thursday's set of data from the 18-nation bloc pushed EUR/USD almost 0.30% to 1.3685.
Stronger-than-expected GDP report eased some of the pressure on the central bank to intervene market in March, while a slump in the manufacturing sector, weak German PPI and weak French CPI all raised concerns the region is far away from being stable. Markit Economics said both manufacturing and services sectors were still expanding in February. A gauge of activity in manufacturing sector slowed to 53.0 from 54.0 a month earlier, while services PMI rose to 51.7, both missing market's forecasts. Despite the fact the measure of new orders climbed for the seventh consecutive month and hit the highest since June 2011, French manufacturing and services PMI remained in contraction zone.
Manufacturing figures below forecasts is not the worst signal for the ECB, as annual inflation in Europe's second largest economy remained unchanged at 0.7% in January. Markets, however, expected a move closer to the official target of 2%, with annual CPI rising 0.8%. On a monthly basis, inflation fell 0.6%.
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