NEW YORK: The dollar edged lower on Monday as investors looked ahead to European and US central bank meetings and US inflation data after Friday’s lower-than-expected jobs data.
Friday’s US jobs data had put pressure on the dollar as investors bet that jobs growth was not strong enough to raise expectations for the US Federal Reserve to tighten its monetary policy.
The dollar index was down 0.1% while the euro was up slightly against the dollar, at $1.2177.
“At this point it looks like the market really wants to be short dollars. To us it suggests there’s a risk chasing this move. It’s a crowded position. You’ve already got a sizeable chunk of the market that’s net short US dollars so if feels like we need a shakeout of those positions,” said Bipan Rai, North America head of FX strategy at CIBC Capital Markets.
Speculators decreased their net short dollar positions in the latest week, according to calculations by Reuters and US Commodity Futures Trading Commission data released on Friday.
The Australian dollar, which is seen as a proxy for risk appetite, was up 0.18% versus the US dollar at 0.776.
In cryptocurrencies, bitcoin was up 0.7% around $36,041, while ether was up 2.6% at $2,780.
Comments
Comments are closed.