CURRENCIES: Euro Climbs To 2 1/2 -week High After Fed Minutes
08 October 2015 - 10:16PM
Dow Jones News
By Joseph Adinolfi, MarketWatch , Hiroyuki Kachi
Dollar weakens against Brazilian real, Turkish lira and other
emerging-market rivals
The euro rose to a 2 1/2 week high against the dollar Thursday
after minutes from the Federal Reserve's September meeting revealed
that policy makers see inflation remaining stubbornly low for the
foreseeable future.
The euro rose to $1.1328 after the data, its highest level since
Sept. 21, according to FactSet data.
But the shared currency soon pared its gains, trading at $1.1272
late Thursday in New York, up 0.3% from $1.1237 late Wednesday.
The dollar finished Thursday's session little-changed at
Yen119.93.
Friday's abysmal nonfarm payrolls report lent additional weight
to the concerns raised by policy makers in the minutes, analysts
said.
"The thing to keep in mind was that these minutes were from two
weeks ago. They hadn't seen the jobs data yet, which was pretty
pitiful" said Lennon Sweeting, a currency strategist at U.S.
Forex.
The minutes
(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/increase-of-downside-risks-led-fed-to-hold-off-rate-hike-in-september-2015-10-08)
showed that some voting members of the policy committee believed
that the U.S. economy wouldn't reach the Fed's inflation target of
just below 2% soon.
During morning trade in New York, the dollar strengthened
against the euro after weekly jobless claims fell to the lowest
level since July,
(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jobless-claims-fall-to-263000-lowest-since-july-2015-10-08)
a sign the labor market was picking up steam after September's
tepid jobs growth.
On Friday, official data showed the U.S. labor market added
142,000 jobs in September, missing the consensus forecast from a
MarketWatch survey of economists by about 50,000
(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-economy-creates-just-142000-new-jobs-in-september-2015-10-02).
Meanwhile, readings from the past two months were revised lower.
The data caused investors to doubt the chances of a Federal Reserve
interest rate increase in 2015.
Emerging-markets currencies also appreciated against the dollar,
led by the Brazilian real, Turkish lira and Indonesian rupiah,
which were all up more than 1% on the day against the dollar.
The real traded at 3.79 to the dollar late Thursday, up 2.3%
from 3.88 late Wednesday in New York. The Turkish lira traded at
2.9 to the dollar late Thursday, up 1.5% compared with 2.94 lira to
the dollar late Wednesday. The Indonesian rupiah traded at 13,822
to the dollar Thursday, up 1.5% from 14,028 rupiah to the dollar
late Wednesday.
The above currencies, as well as their emerging-market peers,
have rebounded against the dollar over the past two weeks after
recording massive declines since the beginning of the year.
The ICE U.S. Dollar index , a measure of the dollar's strength
against a basket of six currencies, was down 0.2% to 95.3250.
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 08, 2015 17:01 ET (21:01 GMT)
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