• Traders have been buying EUR/USD for three weeks

• Dire PMI released when EUR/USD toward peak of its rise

• Big and unexpected contraction of French service sector in February

• Service PMI drops to 44.5 - only one briefly weaker in past two years

• PMI was expected to improve to 48.9 from 48.2

• The lowest of 20 forecasts in Reuters poll was 47.9

• Bad news for yuan, euro and yen is in the pipeline

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French service sector PMI

(Jeremy Boulton is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)