Yahoo Finance Dollar Steadies After Fed; Trade Data Offers Little Help to Aussie Dollar
Investing.com – The U.S. dollar steadied on Thursday after the Federal Reserve concluded a two-day monetary policy meeting and upgraded its view on the economy. Meanwhile, the Aussie dollar weakened despite a jump in the country’s trade surplus, as escalating US-China trade war is likely hurting the AUD.
The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies, gained 0.11% to 94.56 by 12:30AM ET (04:30 GMT) after the Fed gave an upbeat assessment on U.S. economy.
The Fed left interest rate unchanged as expected after concluding a two-day monetary policy meeting but upgraded its view on the economy.
The committee said it expects that “further gradual increases in the target range for the federal funds rate will be consistent with sustained expansion of economic activity, strong labor market conditions, and inflation near the committee’s symmetric 2 percent objective.”
"The Fed delivered rather hawkish comments in the statement emphasizing the strength of the U.S. economy," said Osamu Takashima, head of G10 FX strategy, at Citigroup (NYSE:C) Global Markets Japan.
"There was no big surprise in last night's statement, but the overall tone was a little bit stronger than last one."
The greenback edged 0.14% lower against the yen to 111.57 following the Bank of Japan's pledge to keep rates low for an extended period on Tuesday, while making modest tweaks to its policy.
Elsewhere, the AUD/USD pair fell 0.31% to 0.7382 as the country’s trade surplus widened in June but offered little help to the local currency.
Official data showed on Thursday that Australia’s exports fell to 3% in July from the previous month's 4%.
Imports, on the other hand, fell to minus 1% from June's positive 3%.
The USD/CNY pair slipped 0.06% to 6.8194. The People's Bank of China (PBOC) set the yuan reference rate at 6.7942 on Thursday vs the previous day's fix of 6.8293.
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