USD

The U.S. dollar suffered a sharp selloff in yesterday’s trading when the ISM manufacturing PMI came in worse than expected. 

The actual figure showed a contractionary reading of 49.0, worse than the estimated decline from 50.7 to 50.6. Only the trade balance is due from the U.S. today and a wider deficit is expected, showing that imports outpaced exports for the month.

EUR

The euro landed back above the 1.3000 mark against the dollar yesterday, with the pair even reaching 1.3100. Better than expected manufacturing PMI from Spain and Italy helped boost the euro, but EUR/USD’s strong move came after the US printed a bleak ISM manufacturing PMI figure. For today, only the Spanish unemployment change report is due and it’s expected to show a decline in joblessness.

GBP

The pound chalked up even more gains against the U.S. dollar yesterday, as the UK manufacturing PMI came in much better than estimated. The figure climbed from 50.2 to 51.3, instead of rising to just 50.3. The construction PMI is due from the UK today and it’s estimated to improve from 49.4 to 49.7, with a good chance of an upside surprise.

CHF

USD/CHF tested the broken support at .9600 yesterday and dipped even lower when the US manufacturing figures came out. SVME PMI turned out stronger than expected at 52.2, stronger than the estimated improvement from 50.2 to 50.9. For today, the Swiss calendar is empty, which suggests that USD/CHF could take its cue from U.S. data.

JPY

The Nikkei suffered another strong selloff yesterday, leading USD/JPY to test the 99.50 former support. It didn’t help that US data was weaker than expected. Japanese monetary base increased by 31.6%, which means that there’s much more liquidity in the economy, while the average cash earnings came in short at 0.3% instead of the estimated 0.6% rise. No other reports are due from Japan today.

Commodity Currencies (AUD, CAD, NZD)

The commodity currencies recovered against the U.S. dollar in yesterday’s trading, with AUD/USD climbing back above .9700 and NZD/USD recovering above .8000. The RBA kept interest rates unchanged as expected, but said that there’s room for more rate cuts and that the Australian dollar is still overvalued. Canada will release its trade balance today and a deficit of 0.4 billion CAD is expected.

By Kate Curtis from Trader’s Way