American focus: the dollar fell

The dollar weakened against most major currencies after data on the US labor market. The number of Americans who first applied for unemployment benefits rose last week but remained near the values ​​indicating a stable situation on the labor market. This was reported in the Labor Department report. The number of initial applications for unemployment benefits rose by 7,000 to a seasonally adjusted, reaching 282,000 in the week ended May 23. Economists had expected 270,000 new claims. We also add the figure for the previous week was revised up to 275 000 from 274 000. The Labor Department said that no special factors did not affect the latest data. Meanwhile, it became known that the moving average for 4 weeks, which smooths the volatile weekly data, rose by 5000 - to 271 500 (the lowest value since April 2000). Meanwhile, the number of people who continue to receive unemployment benefits rose by 11,000 to 2.2 million. For the week ended May 16. Recall data on re-treatment come with a week delay.

The pound fell sharply against the US dollar, falling below $ 1.5300 and headed for the minimum values ​​since May 8, as data on British GDP were worse than expected. The revised data provided by the Office for National Statistics showed: in-kind British GDP increased by 0.3% between the fourth quarter of 2014 and the first quarter of 2015. It is worth emphasizing, unedited figure was compared with the previous estimate of GDP, published April 28. Analysts expect that the economy will expand by 0.4% against growth of 0.6% in the fourth quarter. Compared with the first quarter of 2014 UK GDP (in real terms) increased by 2.4%, also in line with the preliminary data published earlier. However, experts predicted expansion of 2.5% against growth of 3.0% in the fourth quarter. Office for National Statistics said that GDP in current prices increased by 0.9% between the 4th quarter 2014 and 1st quarter of 2015. Meanwhile, over the same period per capita GDP increased by 0.1%. The ONS said that business investment grew by 1.7 percent during the first three months of the year (up from the second quarter of 2014) against the forecast of 1.0 percent and economists decline of 0.9 percent at the end of 2014. But trade was the main "brake" of the economy, subtracting 0.9 percentage points from quarterly GDP growth. Meanwhile, household spending rose 0.5 percent, slightly slowing the pace compared to the end of 2014.