The US dollar continued its fall from grace as a series of flaky economic statistics contributed to investors' growing expectation that the Federal Reserve will not increase its benchmark interest rate next month.
Except for weekly jobless claims and business confidence, none of the American data matched up to expectations. Flat retail sales and a -0.3 per cent monthly fall in industrial production were actively damaging to the Greenback.
Meanwhile, the news from Euroland was mostly good. The Eurogroup of finance ministers was almost conciliatory in its comments about Greece, conceding that 'We acknowledged that more time and effort are needed to bridge the gaps on the remaining open issues.'
On Tuesday Greece delivered a €750m repayment to the IMF, albeit only by raiding reserves already held by that institution.
Not all of the eurozone ecostats were helpful. Industrial production, for example, unexpectedly declined by 0.3 per cent in March. But there was positive news in the figures for first-quarter growth. Everyone was surprised when France announced that its economy expanded by 0.6 per cent in Q1, twice as much as Germany and Britain and way more than the States.
Sterling was unable to repeat its previous week's performance but still did tolerably well. It received some help from the UK production and employment data, most of which were ahead of forecast.
The pound also seemed to respond positively to news that Sajid Javid would be the new business secretary - and ex-officio president of the Board of Trade - perhaps because for the first time in 20 years the posts will be held by somebody with experience of business and trade.
The numbers to watch out for this week are the inflation figures from Britain and Euroland (Tuesday) and the United States (Friday). On Wednesday the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve both release the minutes of their last policy meeting.
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