US Retail Sales could make or break the Dollar

Daily Update - 15th May 2018

Yesterday’s Market

• USD Speeches from FOMC members

Yesterday Explained

Yesterday’s attention was on the US Yields as there was no macroeconomic releases to move the markets. Some of the rival currencies gained slight advantage in the beginning of the day only to fallback by US Afternoon. Specially the FED member Bullard’s speech prompted markets towards dollar as he said that FED is on right path to increase interest rates gradually. Just yesterday, the 10-year note yield was as high as 3.00%, while for the 2-year note, the yield reached a new high since 2008 of 2.547%.

Today’s Market

• EUR Gross Domestic Product, ZEW Survey, Industrial Production
• GBP Average Earnings, ILO Unemployment Rate & Claimant Count
• USD Retail Sales

Today’s Focus

An important day for the Euro, as Euro zone GDP figures will be released. Early morning, we will see Germany, the power house of the European economy releasing their GDP figures for the first quarter along with ZEW economic surveys which indicates the consumer confidence in the German economy. Then the focus shifts to UK with the release of several reports related to UK earnings figures. The data will be vital for Sterling as currently it is frozen in place as GBP bulls remain sidelined.

Euro zone will release their GDP figures for the first quarter along with Industrial Production figures from month of march. The day will come to an end with the release of US Retail Sales figures for the month of April. The report is predicted to show a rise of 0.4% in headline sales and an increase of 0.5% in core retail sales which would provide further support to dollar. All in all, the Retail Sales report is crucial in understanding the direction of the US economy and comes at a testy time for the US Dollar.