20.04.201804:15 Forex Analysis & Reviews: Traders do not have enough reference points

The lack of benchmarks and positive fundamental statistics leads traders to a standstill. On the one hand, trading in the EURUSD pair is below a significant resistance level of 1.2395, which has repeatedly limited the upside potential in risky assets. On the other hand, there are also few who want to to sell the euro and go against the trend.

In the first half of the day, data showed that the positive balance of the current account of the euro area's balance of payments in February 2018 decreased compared to January. According to the report of the European Central Bank, the current account surplus of the balance of payments in February fell to 35.1 billion euros against 39 billion euros in January.

However, compared with February 2017, it should be noted that there was growth. As in 2017, the current account surplus of the euro area's balance of payments was at the level of 29.8 billion euros. For the period from March 2017 to February 2018, the surplus of the current account of the euro area's balance of payments totaled 408.1 billion euros.

Let me remind you that Donald Trump has been advocating a criticism of Germany, and a month ago he spoke in favor of introducing a number of trade duties on the European Union. However, up to now the case never came. The White House administration repeatedly appealed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on insufficient efforts related to the reduction of the trade surplus with the US, but failed to receive any support.

On Thursday afternoon, a report was released from the US Department of Labor, which was ignored by the market.

According to the data, the number of Americans, who applied for unemployment benefits for the first time, fell last week. Thus, the number of initial applications for unemployment benefits for the week from April 8 to 14 fell by 1,000 and was at the level of 232,000, which went against the forecasts of economists who expected the number of applications to be 225,000.

The British pound was lower against the US dollar in the morning amid weak data on retail sales, but then managed to regain its position, as traders began to digest Wednesday's report on inflation in more detail. In fact, if you understand, then there was nothing "terrible" in that report, which could cause such a speculative market reaction to the selling of the pound.

According to a report by the National Bureau of Statistics, retail sales in the UK in March 2018 fell 1.2% compared to the previous month. It happened against the background of bad weather. In general, the economic categories of goods and food suffered. For the 1st quarter of 2018, retail sales in the UK decreased by 0.5% compared to the previous quarter.