Just as T-Bonds, Bunds and OATs stagnated on Thursday, FOREX recorded its 5th session of virtual stagnation, with the Dollar Index slipping by 0.05% to 104.00/103.95.
The trend has been slightly downward since Friday 16th, when the $-Index stood at 104.30 last Friday (-0.25 to -0.3% in 5 sessions, a very slow decline).
The Euro is up by a marginal +0.1% to 1.0820, the Dollar is up 0.2% against the Yen and the Swiss Franc, but is up +0.2% against the Yen, which is still as weak as ever and down to 150.60.
The Dollar did not react to the cautious tone of the Fed's 'minutes', which confirmed on Wednesday evening that the central bank wished to give itself time before cutting rates (but only if the fall in inflation is significant), as had been anticipated.

Nor did the euro suffer from the bad German figures: the German manufacturing PMI for February fell by -3.2pts to 42.3... but this was offset by the good performance of the HCOB composite PMI for overall activity in the euro zone, which stood at 48.9 in February, compared with 47.9 in January.
This improvement was driven by the good HCOB composite PMI index for overall activity in France, which rose from 44.6 in January to 47.7 in February, a nine-month high and the smallest decline in private-sector activity in the current downturn.

As for US figures, the US private sector saw its activity growth slow in February, according to S&P Global, whose composite PMI index came in at 51.4 in a flash estimate, after reaching 52 the previous month, its highest since July 2023.

Cost pressures eased further, but growth momentum in the services sector weakened", explains S&P Global, while manufacturing output returned to growth.

Sales of existing homes rose by a slightly stronger-than-expected +3.1% in January in the US (NAR survey), thanks in particular to an acceleration of the market in the Midwest, South and West of the country... but on an annual basis, sales of older homes fell by 1.7%.
The median selling price was $379,100, an increase of 5.1% over 12 months.

The Labor Department announced a drop of -12,000 in US unemployment benefits in the week to February 12, to 201,000 claimants.

The four-week moving average - more representative of the underlying trend - came out at 215,250 for the same week, down by 3,500 on the previous week's revised average.

Finally, the number of people regularly receiving benefits fell by 27,000 to 1,862,000 for the week of February 5, the most recent period available for this statistic.

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