Dollar Up, Claws Back from A One-week Low

© Reuters.

By Zhang Mengying

AiVIF.com – The dollar was up on Friday morning in Asia, clawed back from a one-week low after sliding for two days with the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike decision.

The U.S. Dollar Index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies gained 0.57% to 104.014 by 12:49 AM ET (4:49 AM GMT).

The USD/JPY pair jumped 1.30% to 133.93. The Bank of Japan (BOJ) announced earlier in the day to keep policy ultraloose despite rising inflation while global central banks are taking tight monetary policies, the yen retreated sharply.

“Because of the outside chance that the Bank of Japan would do something today, if you were sitting there long dollar-yen, the risk/reward from running that into the decision and being wrong warranted taking risk off the table,” National Australia Bank (OTC:NABZY) strategist Ray Attrill told Reuters.

“Now that that event risk is past, and the BOJ has stood pat, it's entirely logical that we went back from whence we came,” adding that he remained unconvinced the dollar has peaked.

The AUD/USD pair was down 0.41% to 0.7016, and the NZD/USD pair was down 0.33% to 0.6341.

The USD/CNY pair inched down 0.02% to 6.7014, while GBP/USD pair fell 0.38% to 1.2304.

Global central banks are proactive in tightening monetary policies to tame soaring inflation.

The U.S. Federal Reserve announced on Wednesday its biggest interest rate hike since 1994. The Swiss National Bank also unexpectedly hiked rates by 50 basis points on Thursday, while the Bank of England raised its interest rates to 1.25% on the same day.

On the data front, U.S. initial jobless claims fell to 229,000 for the week ended June 11, slightly below the number of 232,000 recorded from the previous week.