The New Taiwan dollar on Friday rose against the US dollar, gaining NT$0.009 to close at NT$30.105, an increase of 0.3 percent from NT$30.203 a week earlier.
Turnover totaled US$912 million during the trading session.
The greenback opened at the day’s high of NT$30.120, moving to a low of NT$30.000 before rebounding.
Elsewhere on Friday, investors rushed into safe-haven assets after a US airstrike in Iraq killed a senior Iranian military official, sending the Japanese yen to a three-month high, while the US dollar index was knocked by the weakest domestic factory activity in a decade.
In addition to the yen, US Treasuries, German bunds and gold rallied after the overnight airstrike in Baghdad killed Iranian major general Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force and the architect of Tehran’s growing military influence in the Middle East.
“Overall, geopolitical risk premia have risen substantially overnight,” Cambridge Global Payments chief market strategist Karl Schamotta said.
Investors were “really looking for safe havens and a port in the storm,” he added.
The yen had risen to as high as ￥107.82 per US dollar and was last up 0.48 percent on the day at ￥108.04.
The yen is often seen as a haven from risk, given Japan’s status as the world’s largest creditor nation. A holiday in Tokyo also made for thin conditions, exaggerating the move.
The US dollar index initially benefited from the move into safe-haven assets, but those gains were erased after the Institute for Supply Management reported that the US manufacturing sector contracted significantly last month.
The index was last up 0.03 percent on the day at 96.873.
The attack sparked concerns about crude supply disruptions, lifting oil prices more than US$3.
Petrocurrencies rose slightly on the higher crude prices, but those were then largely offset by the overall move away from risk, Schamotta said.
The US manufacturing sector last month contracted by the most in more than a decade, with order volumes crashing to a near 11-year low and factory employment falling for a fifth straight month, the institute said in a report.
It suggests that US-China “trade war-related uncertainty has actually damaged the manufacturing sector on a sustained basis and that points to weakness in GDP, particularly in the coming quarter, because what you’re likely to see is an inventory drawdown as opposed to continued build,” Schamotta said.
The longer-term effects on the US dollar are unclear. Although it weakened Friday, the greenback might ultimately benefit if slower US manufacturing dents hopes for global growth this year.
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