The EUR/USD saw further downside on Wednesday, down a third of a percent on the day and extending the Euro’s backslide from last week’s peak of 1.1017 to two-and-a-third percent, closing in the red for six consecutive trading days. The Euro is the second-worst performing currency on the market Wednesday, shedding value against almost all other major currencies, driven by a worse-than-expected Eurozone Retail Sales print, though the bare miss is only pulling the plug on a drain that was already swirling. European Retail Sales missed the mark early Wednesday, printing at -1.2% for the year into October, rebounding from September’s -2.9% downturn but still in contraction territory and missing the market forecast of -1.1%.
The US ADP Employment Change also missed market forecasts early in the American market session, showing the US employment estimator for November added a net 103K jobs for the month, missing the median market forecast of 130K and falling back slightly from the previous month’s 106K, which was also revised down from 113K. With economic headline figures missing the mark on both sides of the Atlantic, investor sentiment is facing a souring in the back half of the trading week, and the EUR/USD will need to drag itself through another print of Eurozone Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on Thursday, ahead of Friday’s US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) to close out the week’s trading. Thursday’s Eurozone quarterly GDP is forecast to hold at -0.1%, matching the second quarter’s print, while Friday’s US NFP is expected to add 185K new jobs in November, an uptick from October’s 150K. The EUR/USD is extending a backslide through the 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA), cleanly breaking through the 1.0800 level and heading straight for the 50-day SMA at the 1.0700 handle. The Euro is declining to a fresh two-week low with intraday action getting capped by a declining 50-hour SMA, and recent action has seen a hard ceiling from the 1.0800 handle. Near-term momentum has the 200-hour SMA rolling over bearishly into 1.0900, and the immediate technical ceiling for any bullish recoveries will be a support-turned-resistance band near 1.0850.
