EUR/USD Weekly Forecast – 10 April

Saturday, Apr 08 2017

Events that marked the week:

Monday's session brought Spanish Manufacturing PMI figures. Although the Spanish manufacturing sector remained comfortably inside growth territory at the end of the first quarter of the year, there were further signs of a slowdown as output, new orders and employment all rose at weaker rates. There was a pick-up in inflationary pressures, however, with input costs increasing to the greatest extent since April 2011. The PMI dropped for the second month running in March, posting 53.9 from 54.8 in February. Although still signalling a solid monthly improvement in the health of the sector, the latest strengthening of business conditions was the weakest since last October.

From Eurozone, on Tuesday, Spanish Unemployment Change figures were released. The number of unemployed registered in the offices of the Public Employment Services has decreased in March by 48,559 people in relation to the previous month. In the last 8 years unemployment has increased in March, on average, by 11,585 people.During the first quarter of the year unemployment fell by 657 people. It is the first time it has decreased in this period since the year 1999.

Thursday's session brought German Factory Orders figures from Eurozone. Based on provisional data, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) reports that price-adjusted new orders in manufacturing had increased in February 2017 a seasonally and working-day adjusted 3.4% on January 2017. For January 2017, revision of the preliminary outcome resulted in a decrease of 6.8% compared with December 2016 (primary –7.4%). Price-adjusted new orders without major orders in manufacturing had increased in February 2017 a seasonally and working-day adjusted 2.2% on January 2017.

This week markets will be looking at:

German ZEW Economic Sentiment/ZEW Economic Sentiment (Tuesday 11:00)

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