Mixed Numbers From the US Leave USD Traders Puzzled

In the previous Forex update, I mentioned the US Economic Data report that was about to be released. The market has been very uncertain today, so I was hoping it would get some direction from Economic Data, Retail Sales in particular.

Now that the numbers have been released, the Forex market is just as uncertain. That’s because both reports outweighed each other.

The Empire State Manufacturing Index was expected at 18.4 points, but it came in at 15.8 points. That’s quite a dive from above 22 points the previous month. The sub-categories such as employment and new order also dived pretty hard, so it’s a really negative report.

Retail Sales, on the other hand, were pretty good. They increased by 0.5% this time, which is more positive, coming from a 0.1% decline the previous month. The control group also showed better than expected, so this report was a positive one.

One positive and negative report and the market remains where it was, still confused. Our Forex signal in USD/JPY is looking up as this pair makes a turnaround. We opened that signal since the moving averages were providing support on the H1 and H4 charts.