US Data Disappoints, USD Slides

By IBTimes Staff Reporter | June 17 2010 3:44 PM

The greenback was softer across the board in Thursday trading, losing most ground against the Swiss franc by more than 1.7% to 1.1097 while briefly relinquishing the 1.24-level versus the euro. The global equity bourses were little changed on the session, with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 lower by 0.25% while the Nasdaq was softer by 0.15%. The selling in crude oil accelerated somewhat in the North American session, dragging prices lower by over 1% back beneath the $77-level to $76.83.

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The US economic reports released earlier were predominantly softer than forecast. Weekly jobless claims missed calls for an improvement to 450k, instead edging up to 472k from an upwardly revised 460k in the previous week. The labor market continues to struggle with weekly jobless claims hovering above the 400k level in almost 2-years. The CPI numbers were largely inline with market forecasts, with the headline consumer price index printing at -0.2% on a monthly basis and up by 2.0% on an annualized basis. The excluding food and energy CPI also held within expectations at 0.1% m/m and 0.9% y/y. Sharply falling short of consensus estimates was the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing survey, tumbling to its lowest level since September 2009 at 8.0, well beneath calls for a slight decline to 20 from 21.4 a month earlier. The current account deficit, meanwhile, printed better than expected at $109.0 billion in Q1 versus a downwardly revised $100.9 billion deficit in the previous quarter.