Summary:

• Weekly jobless claims and goods trade balance data misses expectations, wholesales inventories print slightly surprises to the upside
• The US dollar remains the weakest currency in G10 basket
• We are still ahead of Chicago PMI release

We’ve just got a fresh macro data from the US economy. Jobless claims and good trade balance data missed expectations. On the flip side, the wholesales inventories came in above forecasts boding well for GDP projections. Those readings usually are not that relevant for investors, although given thin trading volume and lack of other important events they come into the focus today.

 US weekly jobless claims hold steady near four-decade lows. Source: Macrobond, Research XTB

Let’s start with the weekly jobless claims that came in at 245k unchanged from the previous week. It’s a miss as the consensus had called for a decrease to 240k. However, claims are still hovering around the four-decade lows. That suggests that employers are reluctant to limit employees given the shortage of qualified workers. The data shows that the labour market is still in a decent shape. Further on, goods trade deficit for November widened to 69.7bn USD from 68.1bn USD. It’s quite surprising as the street had seen deficit narrowing to 67.9bn USD. Moreover, that’s the largest deficit since March 2015. On the other hand, the whole sales inventories grew 0.7% m/m, whilst the consensus had expected an increase of 0.3%. Overall, the presented package of data should not change much in estimates for Q4 GDP. The present Atlanta GDPNow model sees the US economy expanding in this period by 2.82% annually. Note, that we get Chicago PMI at 2:45 pm BST. This indicator could set expectations ahead of manufacturing ISM which will be released next week. 

 Chicago PMI could set expectations ahead of the release of manufacturing ISM out next week. Source: Macrobond, Research XTB

The release of the data has not impacted the US dollar significantly. However, the greenback has continued to weaken and EURUSD has just posted new daily highs. The bullish momentum has been solid, hence one may expect the pair going towards 1.19615 handle which marks the peak form November. However, with rising trading volume at the beginning of 2018, it’s quite likely that the pair will reverse the recent uptrend. The nearest strong support should be located in the vicinity of 1.18520 level. 

 EURUSD is headed towards highs from November. Source: xStation5