The US dollar on Friday lost ground to the Japanese yen for the fifth straight day and the yen hit a seven-week high against the greenback as investors sought safety amid concerns about a resurgence in COVID-19 cases in Europe and a lack of progress in US fiscal stimulus negotiations.
Strategists also cited investor nerves ahead of the Nov. 3 US presidential election and US-China tensions as the US dollar index registered its first weekly decline since last month.
The sterling fell after the UK discussed negative rates and signaled that it was considering a second national lockdown as new COVID-19 cases almost doubled, while hospital admissions rose and infections soared in London and northern England.
The French Ministry of Health on Friday reported the country’s highest number of COVID-19 infections for a single day since the outbreak began.
There has been “a wave of risk aversion” due to growing concerns about the fight with the novel coronavirus, said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at Oanda Corp in New York.
“Europe seems to be losing its battle right now,” Moya said. “You’re having a lot of downbeat news as far as reopening of the economy and this is likely to weigh on risk appetite.”
In Taipei, the New Taiwan dollar fell against the greenback, shedding NT$0.158 to close at NT$29.152, up 1.2 percent for the week.
While the euro was virtually unchanged against the dollar on Friday at US$1.1851, it was down for its fourth day out of five against the yen, trading at ¥123.79, down 1.5 percent for the week.
The US dollar, after falling to ¥104.27 earlier in the session — its lowest level since July 31 — closed at ¥104.56, down 0.2 percent on the day and 1.5 percent on the week.
While the US dollar was basically flat on the day against a basket of currencies at 93, it registered a weekly decline of 0.4 percent after two weeks of gains.
Along with politics, Japan’s policy of yield curve control was also a factor.
Additional reporting by CNA, with staff writer
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to