The Euro was trading at its lowest-level in three-months against the Japanese Yen on Tuesday as demand for the safe haven Asian currency was bolstered by expectations that the Bank of Japan will refrain from introducing new stimulus measures.
The BOJ is widely forecast to leave its monetary policy unchanged when it concludes its two-day long policy meeting on Wednesday. No further action is expected after BOJ Governor Haruhiko Koruda maintained an upbeat assessment of Japans economy.
The Euro on the other hand is trading close to its lowest level since February as demand for the single currency remains under pressure from expectations that the European Central Bank will choose to implement new monetary easing measures at June’s central bank policy meeting.
Concerns over the Eurozone economy remain high following last week’s GDP data which showed that a number of Eurozone member nations saw their economies contract.
Against the US Dollar the Euro has seen fairly limited movement as investors await the release of the latest Federal Reserve policy meeting minutes.
The minutes are expected to show that the USA’s interest rate will remain at 0.25%.
The minutes will also give economists an insight as to how well the Central Bank thinks the world’s largest economy is performing.
Data released earlier in Tuesdays session had little impact upon the ‘Greenback’ despite showing that US chain store sales increased by 2.4% on a year on year basis last week. Week-on-week sales however fell by -1.3% adding to the run of mixed data coming out of the US in recent weeks.
“This past week’s slippage was mainly due to Mother Nature as a very slow moving storm left heavy snow in the Rockies and flooding in the East. Weather Trends International reported that it was the coldest second week of a retail May in four years and was the wettest in more than 23 years,” said the vice president of research and chief economist at ICSC.
Tomorrow sees the release of the latest Eurozone current account and consumer confidence data, both reports are forecast to show improvement.
Euro (EUR) Exchange Rates
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