Good morning, traders. The U.S. dollar is floating near a five-month high against a bucket of major currencies, overlooking worse than expected retail sales. Most of the bullish trend initiated after the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield crossed above 3% after completing 38.2% retracement.

10 Year Treasury Yield – Daily Chart

Speaking of fundamentals, today is another busy day as the economic calendar is full of medium to high impact economic events. Take a look…

Watchlist – Key Economic Events Today

Eurozone – EUR

Final CPI y/y – As we know, the inflation shows a change in the price of goods and services purchased by consumers. It looks like the UK is struggling with inflation. In April, the final CPI slowed down to an annual pace of 1.3%, yet in between 1-3% range mandated by the ECB (European Central Bank). As per economists’ forecast, inflation is expected to remain at 1.2% this month.

ECB President Draghi is due to deliver opening remarks at an ECB event held in honor of Vitor Constancio, in Frankfurt at 12:00 (GMT). I’m expecting a kind of muted response to this event. Though in case of any remarks on inflation and interest rate, the market may get volatile.

U.S. Dollar – USD

Building Permits m/m – The Census Bureau will be there to release the building permits. It’s an excellent gauge of future construction activity because obtaining a permit is among the first steps in constructing a new building. Inevitably, we only invest in capital assets when the economic activities are on track. As per economists’ forecast, the building permits are likely to remain unchanged at 1.35M. Investors will be ready to trade it at 12:30 (GMT).

Capacity Utilization Rate – At 13:15 (GMT), you should see the US capacity utilization rate. It’s a percentage of available resources being utilized by manufacturers, mines, and utilities. Quite logically, the more use of resources signifies more demand for products and ultimate an increasing GDP. Since the figure is expected to be 78.4% vs. 78%, the greenback can stay supported.

Industrial Production will also be monitored at 13:15 (GMT) and it’s expected to rise by 0.6%, up from the previous 0.5%.

Crude Oil Inventories – For all the crude oil traders, EIA inventories report is something you should not miss today. Considering the sentiments that the U.S. may reimpose sanctions on Iran, the second largest exporter of crude oil in OPEC, the global investors should have increased the demand for oil. If that’s so, investors may expect a draw in inventories this week.

But wait, the API reported a surprise build of 4.854 million barrels of the U.S. crude oil inventories, compared to expectations that this week would see a smaller draw in crude oil inventories of 763K barrels. So, can we expect the same kind of report from EIA? Well, let’s wait for it.

That’s all about fundamentals, stay tuned for technical setups along with live coverage of economic releases. All the best for today.