The dollar is weakening in the wake of Jerome Powell's press conference: however, it didn't pull back as soon as he had finished talking to reporters, which took almost 24 hours (which means that traders found reasons to arbitrage the greenback in the day's news).
The $ Index, which remained stable at around 106 from Wednesday evening to 4.00 p.m. this Thursday, fell by -0.3% at the end of the day to around 105.5.
The surprise was that the Euro followed suit and fell against all currencies (Pound, Yen, CHF, etc.).), remaining stable only against the dollar at 1.0710/1.0715.
The greenback lost -0.4% against the Swiss franc and Canadian dollar and -0.5% against the yen (153.7), which continued its slide (+2% rally in the Japanese currency, from 157.5 at around 10.00 p.m. on Wednesday to 154.2 at around 10.45 p.m.).

The dollar weakened mid-afternoon, following the release of US industrial orders: they rose by a further 1.6% in March 2024, according to the Commerce Department (following a 1.2% increase in February).

US industrial shipments rose by 0.3% in March compared with the previous month. With inventories virtually unchanged, the inventory-to-delivery ratio remained unchanged at 1.47 month-on-month.
These figures do not seem to provide a very convincing reason for the Dollar's decline.

Nor do the others: non-farm productivity rose by 0.3% annualized in Q1 2024, according to the Labor Department's first estimate, due to a 1.3% rise in total output for a 1% increase in hours worked.

Given this weak rise in productivity, but also a 5% increase in hourly wages, non-farm unit labor costs in the US climbed by 4.7% for the first three months of this year.
The US trade deficit remained virtually stable at $69.4 billion in March, compared with the previous month's $69.5 billion (which was revised from an initial estimate of $68.9 billion), according to the Commerce Department.

This 0.1% month-on-month decline in the deficit is the result of a 1.6% drop in US imports of goods and services, to $327 billion, and a 2% contraction in exports, to $257.6 billion.
Weekly jobless claims stagnate once again at 208,000 (and that's 2 months 'flat').

On the European statistics front, the HCOB PMI index for eurozone manufacturing settled below the 50 mark of no change between contraction and growth for the 22nd consecutive month, signalling a further deterioration in economic conditions in April.
Having fallen from 46.1 in March to 45.7, it also highlights a slight acceleration in the contraction of the eurozone manufacturing sector compared with the previous month, with strong divergences in trends at national level.

In France, the PMI manufacturing index fell from 46.2 in March to 45.3 in April, marking the fifteenth consecutive deterioration in the sector's economic situation, with the contraction posting its fastest pace since January.


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