North American Summary and Highlights 18 June

North American session

The USD dipped on a weaker than expected May US retail sales number, up 0.1% overall, and excluding autos and gas, and down 0.1% ex autos, with modest negative back month revisions. A subsequent stronger than expected 0.9% increase in industrial production, with manufacturing also up by 0.9%, had little impact. There was plenty of Fed talk, with Collins, Logan and Musalem sounding hawkish. Williams, Barkin, Kugler and Goolsbee were more balanced, but few sounded notably dovish.

USD/JPY and EUR/USD finished not far from where they were shortly after the data, around 157.80 and 1.0740 respectively, compared to 158.10 and 1.0715 before the data.  AUD/USD above .6650 and USD/CAD near 1.3720 extended their initial post-data moves, as did GBP/USD which moved above 1.27 though EUR/GBP ended little changed. EUR/CHF remained weak, falling to .8490. 

European morning session

USD/JPY gained around 50 pips through the European morning, while most other pairs were not much changed. The USD was marginally firmer against GBP, while EUR/USD and AUDUSD were little changed. EUR/CHF fell around 30 pips to 0.9510, despite there being little news and a slight narrowing the France/Germany 10 year yield spread, so that CHF/JPY made another all-time high at 178.18. 

There was little news of note. The German June ZEW survey came in weaker than expected in both the sentiment and the current conditions indices, but the Eurozone ZEW survey (not much watched) was stronger. Eurozone final CPI was unrevised at 2.6% y/y.