FRANKFURT (dpa-AFX) – The euro gave up initial gains on Friday. At midday, the shared currency was trading at $1.0557. She recorded it at the level of the previous evening. The European Central Bank (ECB) last set the reference rate at $1.0519 on Thursday afternoon.
Trading went smoothly. There were in the euro zone no market-moving economic data published. Investors are waiting for the monetary policy decisions of the European Central Bank (ECB) and the US Federal Reserve in the coming week.
The market is firmly expecting that the US Federal Reserve will only raise the key interest rate by 0.50 percentage points on Wednesday and not by 0.75 points as recently. US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had recently made a corresponding statement.
“It is therefore unlikely that the data releases, such as the producer prices and the consumer survey by the University of Michigan, will cause financial market participants to seriously doubt this assessment again,” commented Esther Reichelt, Commerzbank’s foreign exchange expert, looking at the data over the course of the day. “Nonetheless, the data may be scrutinized for any signs that inflationary pressures are not falling as expected.”/jsl/jkr/jha/