More Americans are employed and they are receiving higher wages, so consumer spending may be the next signal that dollar strength has more room to run.
The US currency climbed the most in three weeks as a gain in monthly payrolls featured full-time jobs in the US reaching a six-year high while hourly earnings advanced. Last month’s retail sales are forecast to have bounced back from a June decline, adding to evidence that may prompt the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month.
“With these numbers, we will start to see more of an advance because everyone is counting this as a validator for September,” Toronto-based Oanda Corp senior currency analyst Alfonso Esparza said by telephone. “The next milestone becomes retail sales.”
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the US currency versus 10 major peers, added 0.3 percent from a week earlier to 1,212.07 in New York. It touched a more-than-four-month high on Friday after the jobs report.
The currency added 0.2 percent against the euro and 0.3 percent versus the yen, its biggest gain in three weeks. This year, the dollar is up 10 percent versus the euro and has added 3.7 percent against Japan’s currency.
The British pound dropped the most in two weeks against the dollar as investors added to bets the Bank of England will lag behind the Federal Reserve when it comes to raising interest rates.
The pound fell 0.6 percent to US$1.5514 as of 2:49pm in New York, its biggest decline since July 23. Sterling weakened 0.7 percent to £0.7039 per euro. It touched £0.6936 on July 17, its strongest level since 2007.
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],”
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
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