Economic calendar: Handful of data from the United States

Usually, in the period between Christmas and New Year trading volumes remain low as a bulk of traders and institution take some time off the markets. Having said that, one should stay cautious as smaller liquidity may facilitate wilder price swings. Moreover, hardly any data is published at this time as well. On Thursday investors will only be served a few readings from the US economy. Weekly jobless claims data will be release at 1:30 pm GMT and initial claims are expected to come in at 216k . While the number of initial claims may seem somewhat stable as of late it should be noted that number of continuing claims dropped significantly in the past few months. Continuing claims are seen dropping to 1675k from 1688k previously. Hour and a half later (3:00 pm GMT) Conference Board will release consumer confidence data for December. The headline gauge is seen dropping from 135.7 pts to 133.7 pts. If estimates are confirmed by the actual data it will mark the second month in a row of this index dropping what could be seen as a warning sign amid latest lacklustre datastream. Last but not least, API will release data concerning oil inventories in the evening (9:40 pm GMT). Oil rallied along with stocks yesterday and the move could be upheld in case API estimates show smaller than expected build or bigger than expect draw. However, one should keep in mind that oil inventories should rise according to seasonality pattern.

EURUSD reacted to the 50-day moving average (green line) a few times in the past months. With the latest break above this technical hurdle the main currency pair used it as support. Having said that, investors may want to watch the aforementioned average in case EURUSD starts to erase current gains. Source: xStation5