Last week, the dollar sank to its lowest level in more than four months

04.08.2024. / 12:55

NEW YORK – The dollar sank to its lowest level in more than four months last week, while the yen had the biggest gains, as the Bank of Japan began tightening monetary policy after 17 years.

The dollar index sank last week by 1.07 percent, to 103.21 points, and during trading on Friday it briefly fell to 103.12 points, the lowest level since March 14.

At the same time, the euro exchange rate strengthened by 0.51 percent against the dollar, to 1.0912 dollars.

The exchange rate of the American currency came under the pressure of weaker-than-expected American economic indicators, primarily data on the slowdown of industrial activity in July to the lowest level in the last eight months, and reports on employment in July, which showed that American employers opened only 114,000 jobs last month. new jobs.

Namely, it was expected that 175,000 of them were opened. The unemployment rate increased from June’s 4.1 to 4.3 percent.

Such data raised expectations that the Fed, which kept interest rates at their current level last week, will start easing monetary policy in September. The market is now speculating that there is a 71 percent chance that the Fed will cut interest rates by half a percentage point in September, and before the employment data, it was considered certain that they would be reduced by 0.25 percentage points. SEEbiz