Early trade in New York: Dollar slips to 4-week low against currencies basket

NEW YORK: The dollar slipped to a 4-week low against a basket of currencies on Friday, still smarting from a sharp drop in Treasury yields the previous session, and as investors increasingly bought into the Federal Reserve’s insistence it would keep an accommodative policy stance for a while longer.

The benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield dipped to a one-month low of 1.528% overnight, moving further away from March’s 1.776%, its highest in more than a year, even in the face of Thursday’s stronger-than-expected retail sales and employment data. On Friday, the 10-year recovered some ground to trade at 1.5816%.

The dollar index measuring the greenback against a basket of six currencies was 0.129% lower at 91.545, its lowest since March 18. For the week the index was down 0.7%, set for its second straight weekly decline.

In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin stood around $61,521.57, below the record high of $64,895 reached on Wednesday, when cryptocurrency platform Coinbase this week made its debut in Nasdaq in a direct listing.