Canadian GDP lags for the second consecutive month

Key Movers

With supporting data released today, the US dollar index (DXY) has jumped back up from yesterday to the 106.46 range. Among those data releases was the US Employment Cost Index quarter-over-quarter. This measures the price businesses and the government pay for civilian labour and is one of the leading indicators of consumer inflation. The employment cost index was higher than both previous levels and expectations at 1.1% versus 1%. The second data release was the Standard & Poor's (S&P)/Case-Shiller (CS) Composite-20 House Price Index (HPI) year-over-year which was higher than expected at 2.2% versus the anticipated 1.8%. This is one of the top indicators of the housing industry’s health and higher-than-expected levels helped to support the USD.

Europe’s Core Consumer Price Index (CPI) yearly Flash Estimate, which excludes food, energy, alcohol, and tobacco data, was released today in line with expectations. Meanwhile, Europe’s yearly CPI, which includes all goods, was lower than expected. This data shows that inflation looks to have decreased for certain sectors of the economy, however, this had little change on the EUR/USD rate so far today.

In Japanese news, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) is concluding their two-day meeting today where officials discussed monetary policy. Currently, the USD is up against the JPY today by around 1.4%.