The euro took most of the week off, but made a return to the spotlight on Thursday afternoon when the European Central Bank president held what is now his six-weekly press conference.
By making clear that improved economic data will not divert the ECB from its plan to print at least €1080bn in the next 18 months, he reassured investors that they were right to sell the euro. They responded accordingly, taking it to new multi-year lows against sterling and the US dollar.
The following day brought yet another 11 1/2-year low for the euro against the US dollar. It happened after the Bureau of Labor announced that unemployment had fallen to 5.5 per cent and that the February increase in non-farm payrolls had been considerably stronger than expected.
The strong jobs numbers persuaded investors to bring forward their estimate of when the Federal Reserve would begin to take interest rates higher. They had been looking at August: the guess now is June.
Another currency to receive a leg up from its central bank was the Australian dollar. In this case it was not because of what the Reserve Bank of Australia did, or is expected to do, but what it didn't do. There had been a fairly broad expectation that the RBA would decide to lower its benchmark interest rate from 2.25 per cent to 2 per cent at Tuesday's board meeting. When it failed to do so investors marked up the Aussie.
The euro will be back in the frame this week. On Monday the Eurogroup meets to reconsider the list of reforms put forward by Athens and the ECB embarks on its €60bn-a-month money-printing spree. There are no particularly important Euroland ecostats on the agenda and only the production and trade figures from Britain.
Watch out for the Australian and Canadian employment data and US retail sales.
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