Euro and Pound Await Key Economic Reports
Market Update: 20 May 2008.
On Monday the dollar received a small boost on the release of the Conference Board's Leading Indicators report. As this report is rarely considered a "market mover", what we were probably seeing was traders taking advantage of profit-taking opportunities prior to the more crucial reports being released later this week.
On the euro front, Tuesday will bring us the ZEW Survey from Germany. This report measures institutional investor sentiment and typically has a very large impact on the currency market. An optimistic outlook from the institutional investors is typically very bullish for the euro, while a negative sentiment tends to be very bearish.
The GBP this week will be driven by several market-moving reports. On Wednesday the BoE will be releasing meeting minutes giving an insight into their policy discussion regarding the latest interest-rate release. This is followed on Thursday by Retail Sales (M/M and Y/Y) and on Friday by UK GDP numbers. The information contained in these reports, particularly the meeting minutes, will help us to establish a longer-term bias for the pound.
Dan Cook
Senior Market Analyst
