Dollar nears 10-month highs on dovish Fed comments

Currencies Direct May 17th 2013 - < 1 minute read

The US dollar inched up to 10-month
highs against a basket of currencies on Friday morning in Asian
trade on dovish comments from the Fed.

EUR/USD slumped to a six-week low
while the greenback was trading around four-and-a-half-year highs
against the yen.

Sterling also weakened on the news,
with the pound
exchange rate
down 0.25 per cent at 1.5237, its lowest in over
a month.

Dollar buying was spurred after the
president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco suggested
the Fed may pull back on its $85 billion-a-month monetary easing
plan.

The dollar index, which measures
its strength against a basket of currencies, was last up 0.4 per
cent to 83.905, just off a ten-month peak of 84.094 set on
Wednesday.

Meanwhile the Australian dollar
continued its decline this month on Friday, with AUD/USD losing 0.6
per cent to an 11-month low of 0.9759.

Its New Zealand counterpart also
suffered, shedding 0.7 per cent to hit a six-month trough of 0.8101
against the greenback.

Written by
Currencies Direct

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