The early part of the session saw the USD strengthen, coming off lows reached yesterday after a bout of profit taking. This move was also allied to some softness in EUR, as ECB’s Visco came to market and confirmed that a talk will take place on a deposit rate cut. However, further into the session, EUR clawed back some ground against the greenback as ECB’s Draghi failed to deliver anything too pertinent in his speech and ECB’s Hansson again tried to downplay the need for further easing by the central bank.
From a data perspective, participants once again raised concerns over Chinese growth, with industrial production (Oct Y/Y 5.60% vs. Exp. 5.80%, Prev. 5.70%) printing at 7-month lows, however these concerns were somewhat tapered by Chinese retail sales (Oct Y/Y 11.00% vs. Exp. 10.90% Prev. 10.90%) showing the fastest pace of growth for 9 months. As a result of this, AUD/USD initially traded lower; however, as USD began to weaken throughout the latter half of the session, the pair finishes trading firmly in positive territory.
Looking ahead, tomorrow sees Australian employment data, German CPI, Eurozone Industrial Production, US weekly employment report and JOLTS, as well as comments from ECB’s Draghi, Weidmann, Nowotny, Fed's Yellen, Bullard, Lacker, Evans, Dudley, Fischer and BoE’s Haldane.