The pound fell for a sixth week against the US dollar — its longest run in four years — as investors pushed back expectations for the timing of the Bank of England’s first interest rate increase since 2007.
Sterling depreciated for a third week versus the euro after Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said policymakers will focus more on Britain’s ailing wage growth when deciding on interest rates.
Sterling dropped 0.5 percent this week to US$1.6687, after sliding to US$1.6658 on Thursday, the lowest since April 8. The unit’s six-week fall is the longest run of losses since June 2010. The pound weakened 0.4 percent to ￡0.8023 per euro, after touching ￡0.8036 on Thursday, its weakest since June 12.
Carney said growth “faces some challenges,” in remarks after central bank officials published their quarterly Inflation Report on Wednesday.
Average weekly earnings fell 0.2 percent in the three months through June, even as unemployment dropped to 6.4 percent, the British Office for National Statistics reported on Wednesday.
The US dollar dropped versus a basket of major peers for the first time in a month as concern the US economy is struggling to gain momentum boosted bets the US Federal Reserve will keep interest rates lower for longer.
The pound was the biggest loser among the 16 major currencies this week as investors pushed back their forecasts for the timing of rate increases.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, which tracks the greenback against 10 developed market peers, fell 0.2 percent to 1,019.42 this week to end a four-week rally.
The US currency rose 0.3 percent to ￥102.36 on the week, as the euro fell 0.1 percent to US$1.3401 for a fifth week of losses, the longest slide since March last year. The yen fell 0.2 percent to ￥137.16 against the euro.
Amid a flareup in tensions with Russia, Ukraine’s hryvnia sank 4.6 percent to 13.1250 per US dollar this week, extending its drop this year to 37 percent, the most in the world after Ghana’s cedi.
The hryvnia was the worst performer among more than 150 currencies tracked by Bloomberg after Kiev said its troops destroyed “part” of a military convoy from Russia.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
VERTICAL INTEGRATION: The US fabless company’s acquisition of the data center manufacturer would not affect market competition, the Fair Trade Commission said The Fair Trade Commission has approved Advanced Micro Devices Inc’s (AMD) bid to fully acquire ZT International Group Inc for US$4.9 billion, saying it would not hamper market competition. As AMD is a fabless company that designs central processing units (CPUs) used in consumer electronics and servers, while ZT is a data center manufacturer, the vertical integration would not affect market competition, the commission said in a statement yesterday. ZT counts hyperscalers such as Microsoft Corp, Amazon.com Inc and Google among its major clients and plays a minor role in deciding the specifications of data centers, given the strong bargaining power of
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
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