USD rises as safe haven amid global technical outages

Key Movers

The euro was down against the USD after yesterday’s rate hold from the European Central Bank (ECB) looked to have little impact on the EUR. Markets will look towards the September meetings to see if the ECB cuts rates ahead of the US Federal Reserve. The EUR/USD pair traded in the low 1.37 range so far today.

The Canadian dollar was down slightly again this morning as Retail Sales data was released. Retail Sales, which measures consumer demand for finished goods by measuring purchases of durable and non-durable goods, showed that shopping trends have cooled. The data for May showed that sales were down -0.8% against an expected -0.6% drop. The Producer Price Index (PPI) data, which measures the average change over time in selling prices received by domestic producers of goods and services, was also down. PPI data for June came in at a 0.0% change instead of being up 0.2% as forecasted. This combination sparked questions about what the next inflation print might look like and what the Bank of Canada (BoC) may do on further cuts. In oil news, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil was down today, continuing its pullback from recent highs. The price dipped from $84+ a barrel earlier this week to just over $80 a barrel this morning.