The US dollar continues to trade strong early on Friday after making gains on the back of strong economic data releases in the previous session, pointing to signs of moderate growth in the US economy. At the time of writing, the US dollar index DXY is trading around 97.35.

US retail sales continued to expand for the third consecutive month during December while manufacturing activity in the Mid-Atlantic region in the US soared to the highest level since eight months during January. According to the Commerce Department, retail sales rose 0.3% MoM and 5.8% YoY during December, while the Philly Fed manufacturing index surged to 17 during January from 2.4 in December.

In more positive news for the US dollar, jobless claims declined by 10k to 204k in the previous week. The figure beat economists’ expectations, which was for an increase in jobless claims to 216k instead. In addition, continuing claims also declined by 37k to 1.767 million during the same period.