Euro falls against both sterling and the US dollar thanks to strength elsewhere

The euro fell to the lowest levels in three months against the US dollar and sterling on Wednesday after a raft of upbeat US economic data began to expose the difference in monetary policy expectations between the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. The single currency also struggled against sterling as the Eurozone’s Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data gave very little support to the euro.

Very early this morning German manufacturing orders are released; this is a very important figure to gauge the strength of the German economy and was forecast to improve from -1,.8 up to 1%. Slightly later on today, at 10am, we will see the release of retail sales data from the Eurozone; this is also expected to increase – from 0% to 0.2% – which could indicate a much welcome boost for the single currency. These two key releases may well help the euro push back against what has been a very disappointing week across all of its major trading peers.