The trade balance data recently released by the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) helped lift the Euro against a number of major currencies in the market.
The EUR/USD pair, for example, rose to as much as 1.3075 in today's trading before slipping down slightly to the current 1.3074 level.
It also rose against the Aussie, which went above 1.2550 levels. This is after the EUR/AUD fell to 1.513 as traders moved to profit taking. The AUD's disappointing performance was further aggravated by weak GDP figures released by China. Contrary to speculations of the GDP rising to 8.0% it rather eased to 7.7% from the previous 7.9%. China, being Australia's major trading partner, is particularly sensitive to the movements in the Chinese economy, and the drop in the GDP figures illustrates that.
Meanwhile, the EUR/JPY pair went up the 128.00 mark, with a high of 128.65. Japan saw a drop in its industrial production, which fell from -5.8% to -10.5%. The same thing happened to its capital utilisation, which sank from 1.7% to 0.7%. However, its bright spot was on the monthly change of its industrial production, which rose to a higher-than-expected 0.6%.
While it rose against the USD, AUD and JPY, the same cannot be said of the EUR's performance against the GBP and the CHF. The EUR/GBP pair is currently settled at 0.8520, while the EUR/CHF fell to as low as 1.2142 before going up to 1.2150.
The EU's trade balance showed positive signs as its seasonally adjusted trade surplus went from EUR9.0B to EUR12B in February, contrary to initial expectations of just EUR9.9B. Oh the other hand the non-seasonally adjusted figure went from a dismal EUR-4.7B to EUR10.4B, beating the initial consensus of EUR3.0B.
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