EURUSD down on EU employment report 2012.04.02
The United States (US) manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI) rose to 53.4 in March 2012, 1.0% higher than the previous month at 52.4 according to the Institute of Supply Management on Monday. The number was better than economists’ projections of 53.0. A PMI above 50 indicates growth in the economy while an index value below 50 indicates contraction. Manufacturing production grew 3.0% from February at 55.3 to 58.3 in March. As well, employment gained 2.9% from 53.2 in February to 56.1 in March, the highest level since June 2011. The backlog of orders and inventories went up 0.5% to 52.5 and 50.0 respectively. Furthermore, prices paid lowered 0.5% following a 1.1% drop in February, the largest drop for seven months.
In other news, Eurostat released Europe’s (EU17) unemployment rate increased a seasonally adjusted 0.1% to 10.8% in February 2012 from 10.7% the previous month. This is the highest rate since the euro’s establishment back in 1999. Additionally, compared to February 2011 at 10.0%, the unemployment rate increased 0.8%. Moreover, 17.13 million individuals are estimated to be unemployed in February 2012. This is 162,000 more individuals from January and 1.5 million more February 2011. European countries with the lowest unemployment rate include Austria (4.2%), the Netherlands (4.9%), Luxembourg (5.2%) and Germany (5.7%), and countries with the highest included Spain (23.6%) and Greece (21.0%).
The EURUSD dropped after release of the EU employment report towards support at 1.3300. This week we are also expecting the U.S. Non Farm payroll report which is expected to show creation of another 200K jobs in the month of March. If the NFP report beats market expectations, we expect to see significant pressure on the EURUSD and expect it to target lows of 1.3200.
Eugene Ross, Analyst
Admiral Markets
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