London Session Currency Performances

The London session today was intense and these are how the currencies performed.

GBP

The sterling performed poorly against its major competitors today. What caused this is still unknown but financial analysts are attributing it to the political unrest across Europe after PM Theresa May’s speech yesterday. The speech was received by investors and marketers very poorly and this affected the GBP in today’s session.

CHF

Even though there a risk-off vibe across Europe today, the CHF performed poorly at today’s session. This means that the Swiss franc is the second worst performing currency after the sterling.

JPY

The political unrest in the UK and Europe means the yen was the safe haven for most traders. The currency was the major beneficiary from the activities going on around Europe and Britain. The currency also performed well in response to the optimism of Bank of Japan’s Nakaso’s speech during the London session.

USD

The USD Index soared to 93.99, its highest level since August 17, 2017. What are factors that have caused the greenback to rise?

U.S. Jobless Claims Fall

One of the events that took place today was the release of the US jobless claims data. The number of Americans that are filling up the unemployment forms drastically reduced over the week but the effect of the twin hurricanes Harvey and Irma still have a very strong effect on the data released. This has made it tough for analysts to have a clear picture of how exactly the labor market is performing at the moment.
The department of labor announced that state unemployment claims dropped massively by 12,000 to around 260,000 for the previous week.

Comments from officials of the department claimed that hurricanes Harvey and Irma along with Maria all played a role in affecting the data for areas like Texas, Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

U.S. Trade Deficit

The US trade deficit for the month of August was released today and the data shows that the deficit was reduced as exports of goods and services was at an all-time high in the past two and a half years. The data further served as an indication that exports could help relieve the tension and pressure on the economy that is being affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma

The US Department of Commerce revealed today that the trade gap sharply reduced by .7 percent to $42.4 billion. They also said that the effects of the triple hurricanes would be inserted into the data for trade and this will reflect in other areas of the economy.