Swedish Consumer Confidence Rises, SEK Pares Losses
February 2nd, 2010 Posted in Chief Analyst Special Report
The Swedish Krona (SEK) stabilized against its US counterpart during Thursday’s early trading after a few government reports disclosed information that the nation’s retail sales in December, as well as consumer confidence in January, increased at a faster pace than previous months.
Sweden’s retail sales rose 4.5% year-on-year in December, faster than the 3.6% growth in the previous month. Economists expected an increase of 5.3%, however, which only highlights the recent optimism being injected into the Scandinavian region. Also, Sweden’s consumer confidence rose to a reading of 8.5 points in January from 7.6 points in the previous month, adding weight to the previous notion.
On the other hand, Sweden announced that its jobless rate stood at 8.6% in December, up from 8% in the previous month. This represented a 0.3% rise above the expected unemployment rate of 8.3% and added further downward pressure to the Swedish Krona.
The SEK slumped to the 6-month low of 7.3965 against the US Dollar recently, but recouped some of its losses and touched a 3-day high of 7.2520 this morning. Whether the recent uptrend of the USD/SEK continues will depend largely on whether the USD pares some of its recent losses from this week’s employment and inflationary data.
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Tags: baltics, dollar, Forex, forex blog, forex market, Scandinavian Analysis, scandinavian currencies, SEK, Sweden, Swedish Krona, USD Trading, USD/SEK
