“I would be very wary of calling the bottom for the euro at this point,” said Samarjit Shankar, a managing director for the foreign-exchange group at Bank of New York Mellon, in a Bloomberg News report Friday. “Going into the long weekend there has been an acceleration in U.S. Treasury inflows in a reaffirmation of the resolutely negative sentiment is in place for all European assets.”
Still, in U.S. equities, some of the best-performing ETFs this week tracked riskier sectors. The top unleveraged ETFs this week were iShares DJ US Home Construction (NYSEArca: ITB), SPDR S&P Homebuilders (NYSEArca: XHB) and Market Vectors Gold Miners (NYSEArca: GDX). They were on track for weekly gains of more than 6% on Friday afternoon.
Conversely, the bottom three unleveraged ETFs this week were in commodities: iPath Cocoa (NYSEArca: NIB), U.s. Natural Gas (NYSEArca: UNG) and iPath Cotton (NYSEArca: BAL) with declines of at least 6%.
U.S. equity and bond markets will be closed on Monday for Memorial Day. In the holiday-shortened week, look for economic reports on home prices, consumer confidence, pending home sales and the employment report for May.
PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish