Higher PPI & Worse Retail Sales Leave USD Traders Puzzled

The market is waiting for the US retail sales to be released. The producer price index (PPI) is not the most important report since the consumer inflation CPI (consumer price index) is the primary means of inflation for the central bank.

At the moment, the PPI report requires additional attention because inflation has been lagging. The consumer prices are not following the economic growth and wage inflation is subdued as well.

The retail sales report was released: it was negative. Below are the numbers for retail sales and PPI:

Retail sales          0.3% Expected    -0.1% Actual

Core retail sales  0.4% Expected    0.2% Actual

PPI                        0.1% Expected    0.2% Actual

Core PPI               0.2% Expected    0.2% Actual

The retail sales missed badly and last month was revised higher, removing some of the negativity from the report.

The PPI report is slightly positive and improved the sentiment for the US Dollar right now. In fact, the USD is getting some momentum now.

If something cannot go down, chances are it will go up.