On a day where footage emerged showing that Trump was unable to remember the words to ‘God Bless America’ at a patriotic event he had commissioned, the US’s trade balance for April beat forecast. It had been expected to show a $49 billion deficit, but it actually narrowed to $46.2 billion which is the lowest deficit for seven months.
Mortgage applications up to the week ending 1 June 2018 increased by some 4.1% after decreasing by 2.9% in the period before. It is the first gain following six straight weeks of declines. Nonfarm labour productivity also increased to 109.05 index points in the first quarter of 2018 from 108.94 in the fourth quarter of 2017. Still, despite all of these positive data releases, the dollar still weakened against sterling and the euro. The dollar has been on such a winning streak of late that any news from the UK or eurozone that caused a bit of a downturn was always likely to have some momentum. How long will it last though?
Today we will see initial jobless claims up to 2 June 2018. The last reading was much better than expected, coming in at 221,000. That figure is expected to have risen a little to 225,000.
