The euro dropped against the majority of its most-traded counterparts as concern increased that the region’s leaders would not be able to contain the sovereign-debt crisis, after Fitch Ratings put France on negative outlook and said six other European nations might be downgraded.
The 17-nation currency erased earlier gains against the US dollar as Fitch revised its outlook on the ratings of Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Italy, Ireland and Cyprus to negative, and said France was more exposed to the crisis than other top-rated eurozone countries. Canada’s currency fell, erasing earlier gains, as European ratings concerns damped demand for higher-yielding assets.
“There is a positive and negative camp and Fitch is obviously in the negative,” said Brian Dolan, chief strategist at FOREX.com, a unit of online currency trading firm Gain Capital in Bedminster, New Jersey. “The market is ahead of the ratings agency and the declines we’ve seen in the euro is pricing in a probability of a ratings cut.”
The euro gained 0.2 percent to US$1.3046 at 5pm in New York on Friday, after gaining as much as 0.5 percent. It fell 2.5 percent this week, the biggest such decline since the five-day period ended Sept. 9. The shared currency rose 0.1 percent to ¥101.47. The Japanese currency rose 0.1 percent to ¥77.76 per US dollar.
The euro has depreciated 0.8 percent this year against nine developed-nation counterparts, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes. The yen has advanced 4.8 percent and the US dollar has gained 1.7 percent.
The New Zealand dollar, nicknamed the “kiwi,” rose the most among the 16 major currencies tracked by Bloomberg, adding 1.1 percent to US$0.7618, paring its loss this week to 1.8 percent. Canada’s currency fell 0.3 percent to C$1.0383 and the nation’s 10-year bond yields fell below 1.9 percent for the first time.
Standard & Poor’s put 15 of the 17 euro nations on “creditwatch negative” last week, pending the outcome of last week’s summit and the actions of central bankers.
The euro earlier gained after Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker said Europe should meet a deadline for arranging loans with the IMF as part of a crisis- fighting package.
The three-month cross-currency basis swap, the rate banks pay to convert euro payments into dollars, was 122 basis points below the euro interbank offered rate, 18 basis points lower than Thursday’s 140 basis points. The measure reached 162 last month, which was the highest level since October 2008.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy