Investing.com – The euro pushed higher against the dollar on Monday after Friday’s U.S. jobs report fell short of expectations, but gains were checked after weak Italian data fuelled fears that its economy is falling back into a recession.
EUR/USD was up 0.24% to 1.2484, recovering from Friday’s 26-month trough of 1.2356.
The dollar turned lower after data on Friday showed that though employment growth was solid last month, the U.S. economy added fewer than expected jobs. The soft data prompted investors to take profits in the greenback following its recent rally.
The Labor Department said 214,000 jobs were created in October, less than expectations of 231,000.
The U.S. unemployment rate ticked down to a fresh six-year low of 5.8% from 5.9% in September.
The US dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was down 0.27% to 87.43, off Friday’s four-and-a-half year peaks of 88.31.
In the euro zone, data on Monday showed that Italian industrial production fell 0.9% from a month earlier in September, compared to expectations for a 0.2% gain.
Italian industrial output was down 1.1% in the third quarter, accelerating from a 0.5% decline in the three months to June. It was the largest decline since the last three months of 2012.
The report fuelled fears that the steep decline will drag down third quarter growth after the economy contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter.
A separate report showed that the Sentix index of euro zone investor confidence improved modestly this month, but remained close to 18 month lows.
Research group Sentix said its index of investor confidence improved to minus 11.9 this month, from minus13.7 in October, which was the lowest since May 2013.
Analysts had expected the index to improve to minus 6.9.
Elsewhere, the euro was lower against the firmer yen, with EUR/JPY down 0.26% to 142.36.
USD/JPY was down 0.46% to 114.05 from 114.58 late Friday, off the seven year peaks of 115.58 hit ahead of Friday’s jobs report.