US retail sales up 8.5% to Christmas

US retail sales were up 8.5% during the pre-Christmas period of November 1 to December 24, a period that included Black Friday and Thanksgiving, overshadowing worries of a fallout from Covid-19 on consumer spending.

According to Alpha Bank’s Cyprus Treasury bulletin, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus does not seem to affect the market, as had initially been expected, and may even speed up the end of the pandemic.

The bulletin said that the US dollar was trading at 1.325 to the Euro as of Tuesday morning, with EURUSD opening on Tokyo at 1.1329, USDJPY at 114.81 and GBPUSD at 1.3442.

Gold was trading at 1814 dollars an ounce and the benchmark Brent crude at 79 dollars a barrel.

Exchange rates per the Euro on Tuesday morning were as follows:

In New York, the Dow Jones closed Monday at 36,302, a gain of 0.98%, the Athens stock exchange closed down 0.54% at 886, while the Nikkei in Tokyo was trading on Tuesday at 29,069, an intra-day gain of 1.37%.