FX.co ★ Euro and pound get to important levels

The European currency continued to rise against the US dollar in the first half of the day on Thursday, but then lost its position amid a good report on the labor market in the US.

A good result is an increase in inflation in France in May this year, which exceeded all forecasts of economists, helped by rising prices for energy and food.

According to the data of the Insee statistics agency, the consumer price index CPI of France in May this year increased by 0.4% compared to the previous month. Compared to the same period in 2017, inflation increased by 2%. Economists predicted that the index will grow by 0.3% compared to the previous month and by 1.9% compared to the same period last year.

Core inflation, which does not take into account the volatile categories, in France increased by 2.3% in May compared to the same period of the previous year after rising by 1.8% in April. Let me remind you that the target level of the ECB is 2%.

As for the euro area, the annual rate of inflation has also significantly accelerated, which is a very good signal for the European Central Bank, but only on the one hand. As you can see, the growth was due to a sharp rise in energy prices, while other categories did not show a significant increase.

According to the data, the preliminary consumer price index CPI of the eurozone in May 2018, compared with the same period last year, rose by 1.9% after rising by 1.2% in April. Economists had expected that in May the index would grow by 1.6%.

Energy prices for the year increased by 6.1%, which was the main increase in the index. The base consumer price index, which does not take into account volatile categories, including energy prices, rose by only 1.1% in May after rising by 0.7% in April.

The British pound received good support from data on the volume of consumer lending in the UK, which grew in April this year. This state of affairs allows the Bank of England in the near future to consider the option with a further increase in interest rates in the coming months.

According to the data, net consumer lending in the UK in April increased by 5.7 billion pounds against 4.4 billion pounds in March. A serious recovery was observed in unsecured consumer lending, which, according to the report, jumped to 1.8 billion pounds in April after falling to 400 million British pounds in March. Mortgage lending in April, on the contrary, fell to 3.9 billion pounds against 4.0 billion pounds in March.