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Dollar Moves Higher Against Major Rivals
U.S. currency is lower against commodity currencies
The dollar rose against some of its major rivals, but fell against most commodity currencies as global stocks took a breather after last week’s selloff.
The dollar gained 0.4% against the Japanese yen to 117.830 per dollar, and rose 0.7% against the British pound, which recently fetched 1.4138 dollars per pound.
At the same time, the dollar fell against currencies of a number of commodity-producing countries, including the Norwegian krone, the Australian dollar and the Canadian dollar.
The euro rose 0.1% to $1.0902. The WSJ Dollar index was down slightly by 0.03%.
The moves come after the dollar’s gains on Friday when a steep selloff in oil and Chinese stocks heightened anxieties that had pushed markets lower this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 2.4% on Friday, dropping below 16,000 for the first since Sept. 29. Tuesday morning, the Dow rose 0.8%.
The dollar pared some of the overnight gains as the U.S. trading session began and crude-oil prices turned negative.
“What we’re seeing in general is that risk comes off a little bit from its earlier levels, and that has resulted in the dollar giving up some of its earlier gains against the euro and yen,” said Omer Esiner, chief market analyst at Commonwealth Foreign Exchange.
The dollar’s moves have been largely driven by what is happening in broad global financial markets.
“We have, on one hand, the prospect of a hard landing in China, continued weakness in commodities, uncertainty in emerging markets and global deflationary concerns, creating a very heightened level of volatility for much of this year so far,” Mr. Esiner said. “That’s not a backdrop where the Fed will likely be raising interest rates throughout the course of 2016; that’s negative for the dollar, broadly speaking.”
The dollar fell against most emerging-market currencies, down 0.3% against the Brazilian real, 1.1% lower against the Russian ruble and down 0.6% against the South African rand. But the dollar made some modest gains against the offshore Chinese yuan, up 0.1% to 6.5941 per dollar
