The US dollar remained weak against a basket of currencies on Friday, bruised by comments by senior US officials this week backing a weak US dollar, and capped its worst weekly fall since June last year.
The US dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was down 0.33 percent at 89.1 and posted a weekly fall of 1.6 percent.
US President Donald Trump’s comments on Thursday that he wanted a “strong dollar,” a day after US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin said a weaker greenback would help US trade balances in the short term, failed to put a lid on volatility and keep US dollar bears in check.
The euro on Friday rose 0.15 percent against the greenback to US$1.2413, after hitting a more than three-year high of US$1.2536 on Thursday. The common currency is up 1.6 against the US dollar for the week.
“US$1.25 in euro-dollar is a critical level and it’s got a lot of sticker shock associated with it,” said Greg Anderson, global head of foreign-exchange strategy at BMO Capital Markets.
“There were probably a lot of options barriers and lots of stops up there that people would love to take out. You would expect to see an acceleration in volatility,” he said.
UBS Wealth Management on Friday upgraded its six-month forecasts for the euro from US$1.22 to US$1.28.
In Taipei, the New Taiwan dollar fell NT$0.032 against the US dollar to close at NT$29.101. For the week, the NT dollar rose NT$0.329, or 1.12, against the greenback on the back of foreign fund inflows.
Data showing US fourth-quarter GDP increased at a 2.6 percent annual rate, held back by a modest pace of inventory accumulation, had little effect on the greenback.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast a 3 percent increase.
“The disappointing print surprised market participants who had expected a number exceeding 3 percent in the October-to-December time period — but on a full-year basis, the [US] economy’s stellar growth performance remains largely intact.” Karl Schamotta, director of global product and market strategy at Cambridge Global Payments, said in a note.
The US dollar slipped to four-and-a-half-month low against the Japanese yen after Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said the bank expects the economy to continue growing at a moderate pace and inflationary expectations are picking up slightly.
The US dollar fetched ¥109.20 in Tokyo afternoon trade, down from ¥109.44 in New York, but still slightly up from levels below ¥109 earlier Thursday in Asia.
The British pound edged higher further against the US dollar.
Additional reporting by AP and CNA
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the