USD continued to grind higher - BNZ

Jason Wong, Currency Strategist at BNZ, notes that the USD continued to grind higher on Friday, setting fresh milestones in the process. 

Key Quotes

“There was little newsflow to drive markets – investors were still adjusting positions to reflect the new Trump world of potentially easier fiscal policy and tighter monetary policy.  The USD major currency TWI added another 0.3%, taking it to its highest level since early February and taking the cumulative gain since the US election to 3.2%.  Given their exposure to USD-denominated debt, emerging market currencies are seeing the most pressure and losses against the USD have been moderated to some extent by policy actions – direct intervention in the case of China, Indonesia and Malaysia, amongst others and Mexico’s central bank hiked rates late last week to help stem the losses of the Peso.”

“The weekend media made much of the fact that EUR/USD fell for the tenth consecutive day, the longest losing streak since the euro was introduced in 1999 and taking the cumulative loss over those ten trading sessions to 4.9%.  On the day it fell by 0.4% to 1.0588, not helped by some dovish comments by ECB President Draghi in a keynote speech at a European Banking Conference.”