Forex: Friday’s review

The yen fell against the dollar after an official from the G20 group reported that the latest draft of the statement does not repeat the G7 opinion as to whether that exchange rates should not be the object of politics. Meanwhile, the G20 called on members to avoid competitive devaluations, and stressed that exchange rates should be set by the market. Note that the yen fell by 7.2% this year against the dollar, which was associated with the desire to stimulate economic growth in Japan.

The Canadian dollar fell for the first time in four days against the U.S. dollar after Statistics Canada reported that the volume of supply in the industrial sector fell by -3.1% in December after rising 1.7% in November. Note that this decline was the worst in 43 months. Meanwhile, data showed that sales in manufacturing decreased to 48.02 million Canadian dollars (47.94 million U.S. dollars). Decline in December, according to analysts, primarily due to a decrease of 9.1% in the transport sector, and also in the assembly of cars (15.4%).

Pound shows its greatest weekly decline against the U.S. dollar since June, when the Office for National Statistics said that retail sales fell in January by 0.6%. This happened after a revised fall of 0.3% in December. Office for National Statistics indicated that the volume of retail sales in January was 0.6% lower than it was a year ago, that was the first time since the summer of 2011. Despite the fact that in the second half of the month was heavy snowfall, analysts were optimistic and predicted that the market will recover from disappointing data in December and shows a growth rate of 0.5%.