The US dollar on Friday rose to a two-decade peak against the yen and kept close to a two-year high to the euro, as more hawkish comments from US Federal Reserve officials reinforced expectations for faster US policy tightening.
The greenback rose 0.43 percent to ￥126.40 after earlier reaching ￥126.56 for the first time since May 2002.
The euro slipped 0.14 percent to US$1.0812, heading back toward the overnight low of US$1.0785, a level unseen since April 2020.
In Taipei, the New Taiwan dollar on Friday fell against the greenback, losing NT$0.114 to close at NT$29.118, down 0.7 percent for the week.
New York Fed President John Williams on Thursday said that a half-point rate rise next month was “a very reasonable option,” in a further sign that even more cautious policymakers are on board with faster monetary tightening.
By contrast, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde at about the same time said that there was no clear time frame for when ECB rates would start to rise, adding that it could be weeks or even several months after the central bank winds down its stimulus scheme in the third quarter.
“Williams spoke openly of the need to move rates more swiftly and above neutral,” further buoying the US dollar, Westpac Banking Corp macro strategist Tim Riddell wrote in a client note.
By contrast, the ECB “revealed a more dovish reaction function to the inflation news than the market had discounted,” he said.
US Treasury yields resumed their climb overnight, following a two-day decline, further buoying the greenback. Treasuries did not trade in Tokyo on Friday because of the Good Friday market holiday in the US, as well as other regions including Australia, Hong Kong and the UK.
The US dollar index rose 0.08 percent to 100.48, edging back toward the two-year high of 100.78 reached on Thursday.
For the week, it has climbed 0.64 percent, while the euro has dropped 0.58 percent.
Against the yen, the US dollar climbed 1.71 percent, posting a sixth straight winning week.
Japanese Minister of Finance Shunichi Suzuki on Tuesday said that the government is watching yen moves and their impact on the economy “with a sense of urgency.”
“Despite repeated verbal intervention over the past few weeks from Japanese policymakers, USD/JPY has continued to rise alongside higher US yields,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a note.
Cryptocurrency bitcoin continued to consolidate close to a four-week low of US$39,218.15 reached on Monday, last changing hands at US$40,005.50.
“Bitcoin is in the danger zone as risky assets are tumbling as the bond market selloff resumes,” Oanda Corp senior market analyst Edward Moya wrote in a note. “If it breaks below US$38,000, it could get ugly real fast.”
Additional reporting by CNA, with staff writer
South Korea’s equity benchmark yesterday crossed a new milestone just a month after surpassing the once-unthinkable 5,000 mark as surging global memory demand powers the country’s biggest chipmakers. The KOSPI advanced as much as 2.6 percent to a record 6,123, with Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc each gaining more than 2 percent. With the benchmark now up 45 percent this year, South Korea’s stock market capitalization has also moved past France’s, following last month’s overtaking of Germany’s. Long overlooked by foreign funds, despite being undervalued, South Korean stocks have now emerged as clear winners in the global market. The so-called “artificial intelligence
CONFUSION: Taiwan, Japan and other big exporters are cautiously monitoring the situation, while analysts said more Trump responses ate likely after his loss in court US trading partners in Asia started weighing fresh uncertainties yesterday after President Donald Trump vowed to impose a new tariff on imports, hours after the Supreme Court struck down many of the sweeping levies he used to launch a global trade war. The court’s ruling invalidated a number of tariffs that the Trump administration had imposed on Asian export powerhouses from China and South Korea to Japan and Taiwan, the world’s largest chip maker and a key player in tech supply chains. Within hours, Trump said he would impose a new 10 percent duty on US imports from all countries starting on
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up DeepSeek’s (深度求索) latest AI model, set to be released as soon as next week, was trained on Nvidia Corp’s most advanced AI chip, the Blackwell, a senior official of US President Donald Trump’s administration said on Monday, in what could represent a violation of US export controls. The US believes DeepSeek will remove the technical indicators that might reveal its use of American AI chips, the official said, adding that the Blackwells are likely clustered at its data center in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China. The person declined to say how the US government received
Like many of us who are mindful of our plastic consumption, Beth Gardiner would take her own bags to the supermarket and be annoyed whenever she forgot to do so. Out without her refillable bottle, she would avoid buying bottled water. “Here I am, in my own little life, worrying about that and trying to use less plastic,” she says. Then she read an article in this newspaper, just over eight years ago, and discovered that fossil fuel companies had plowed more than US$180 billion into plastic plants in the US since 2010. “It was a kick in the teeth,” Gardiner
RSS