- On Friday, the NZD / USD fell to new lows of several weeks.
- The US dollar index rallies around 100.50 after an early decline.
- Retail sales and industrial production in the United States fell at a record pace in April.
After remaining relatively calm near 0.6000 during trading hours in Asia, the NZD / USD was under strong downward pressure and fell to a three-week low of 0.5921.
As the markets became sluggish, the pair entered a consolidation phase in the past hour and was last seen falling 1.13% to 0.5933. On a weekly basis, the pair is down about 80 pips and remains on track to record its lowest weekly close since the last week of March.
Earlier today, heightened tensions between the U.S. and China weighed on the Chinese attorney. Kiwi. The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced that it has prohibited Huawei from purchasing semiconductors from certain U.S. manufacturers. Responding to this development, the editor of the Global Times said that China could restrict or investigate American companies such as Qualcomm, Cisco and Apple and suspend the purchase of Boeing aircraft.
USD strengthens after mixed US data
In the second half of the day, data from the United States showed that Retail sales and industrial production in April decreased by 16.4% and 11.2%, respectively. These two figures are the largest monthly declines ever recorded in these data.
Finally, the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index, surprisingly, edged up slightly to 73.7 in May from 71.8 in April.
Commenting on the retail sales data, “with the blockages starting to be lifted and many parts of the country starting to reopen, April may very well be the bottom for many retailers, which means sales should start to recover in May, “said Wells Fargo. analyst.
Although the US dollars The index fell slightly during the first trading hours of the US session, he had no trouble recovering his losses. For the moment, the index is up 0.15% on the day to 100.42 and seems to gain more than 1% for the week.