The USD has lost a fair bit of ground in February failing to benefit from a renewed rise in US Treasury yields. A more positive risk environment recently has undermined some of the demand for USDs while some negative data surprises such as the ISM manufacturing survey and non farm payrolls have also weighed on demand for the USD.
The release of January retail sales data today will give another opportunity to gauge the path of consumption at the turn of the year but unfortunately for the USD a relatively flat outcome for sales will provide little rationale to buy the currency. The consensus expectation is for headline retail sales to post a 0% monthly reading, while sales ex autis is likely to rise by a measly 0.1%.
In the near term this implies little potential for a USD rebound but over but over coming weeks I expect the USD to rally in line with higher US yields. USD index (DXY) is likely to flatline around the 80 level in the coming sessions before rallying over coming weeks.
ECONOMETER 
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