The British pound is flying into the abyss, and Donald Trump considers what happened at the end of last year on the American stock market (we are talking about its collapse) only "failure". Such news marked yesterday's trading day in the Forex market, which strengthened the position of the US dollar against most world currencies.
The data that were released on the American economy yesterday afternoon, although they were negative, generally did not affect the balance of power in the market.
According to the report, the US manufacturing index declined last December, as did the business confidence index.
According to Markit, the PMI purchasing managers index for the manufacturing sector in December 2018 fell to 53.8 points, while in November it was still 55.3 points. The decline was due to a slowdown in the growth of new orders. Let me remind you that finding the index above 50 points indicates an increase in activity.
As noted in Markit, a number of companies reported difficulties in attracting workers and resources.
Data on retail sales from major US networks were worse than economists' forecasts.
According to the report of The Retail Economist and Goldman Sachs, the index of sales in US retail chains fell by 1.3% in the week from December 23 to 29 compared to last week. Compared to the same period in 2017, the retail sales index in the USA increased by 4.6%.
The Redbook report was more positive. According to the data, in the first 4 weeks of December, retail sales in the United States increased by 7.7% compared with the same period in 2017. For the week from December 23 to December 29, sales increased by 9.3% year on year.
As I noted above, yesterday the US president made several statements regarding North Korea and the growth prospects of the American economy.
Donald Trump happily announced that he received an important letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un saying that North Korea is no longer conducting nuclear weapon tests.
Trump also spoke about the instability of the markets, drawing attention to the fact that in the current conditions intervention and assistance from the Federal Reserve System is required. Most likely, we are talking about interest rates and the rate of their further increase. The President of the United States firmly believes that the trade agreements reached will help the American economy this year.
It was interesting to hear about how the recent collapse of stock markets Donald Trump called the usual "failure", saying that the market will begin to grow again after the conclusion of new trade agreements.
Meanwhile, the British pound is falling into the abyss against the backdrop of unsuccessful attempts by British Prime Minister Theresa May to somehow change the situation associated with the conclusion of an agreement on Brexit. As it became known yesterday, May plans to meet with a number of EU leaders this week to further discuss a pre-agreed deal on UK withdrawal from the EU. This is a meeting with Angela Merkel and the Prime Minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, as well as the President of the European Council Donald Tusk.
The material has been provided by InstaForex Company - www.instaforex.com