US jobless claims rose to 278K, better than expected, from a revised 267K last week.. The 4 week moving average slides to 292.75K. Continuing claims stand at 2.4 million. The trade deficit widened to 46.6 billion. Productivity declined 1.8% in Q4 but unit labor costs jumped 2.7%. However, the previous labor costs for Q3 were revised down.
Markets are looking for a direction after the mixed data. Update: the US dollar is sliding on the data.
US jobless claims were expected to bounce back up to 287K from a surprisingly good 265K level last week. This is the last indicator towards the NFP. The US trade balance was expected to show a smaller deficit: 38.2 billion. The non-farm productivity level carried expectations for a rise of 0.3% and last but not least, unit labor costs were expected to rise by 1.3% after a fall of 1% last month.
The dollar was on the slide once again: EUR/USD trading above 1.14. GBP/USD around 1.5260, USD/JPY around 117.50, USD/CAD around 1.2515 and AUD/USD just above 0.78.
Earlier in the week, we had underwhelming US numbers: a disappointing factory orders numbers sent the greenback way down. The employment components in the ISM PMIs were weaker than last month and ADP saw a small miss.
More: EURUSD : patience before going short; GBPUSD has some more room to rise – Elliott Wave Analysis
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