FX round-up: Fed's Bullard, ECB's Weidmann sound hawkish note

The dollar was stronger across the board come Wednesday on the back of somewhat hawkish remarks from another Fed speaker.

In remarks to Bloomberg TV on Wednesday, the president of the Federal Reserve bank of St.Louis, James Bullard, chimed in with recent warnings from his colleagues at the Atlanta and San Francisco, saying the US central bank should consider an interest rate hike in April.

Together with Boris Johnson's testimony before the Treasury Select Committee, that saw cable retreat 0.79% to 1.4095.

Weighing on sentiment towards the pound as well, the latest opinion poll by ComRes for ITV News revealed that 48.0% of those surveyed continued to back the "remain" campaign, while 41.0% said they would vote to "leave". That was the smallest lead for the "in" camp in the telephone surveys carried out by ComRes since the May general election.

Nonetheless, it was the more volatile carry currencies that suffered the biggest setbacks, with the Australian and New Zealand dollars both down sharply.

AUD/USD plummeted 1.25% to 0.7526 alongside a 0.99% slide in NZD/USD to 0.6686, as of 17:01GMT.

On the flip side, German Bundesbank chief and ECB governing council member Jens Weidmann said the ECB had no need to be in a rush to lift consumer price inflation back to its 2.0% medium-term target.

"All things considered, the decisions for me went too far and the comprehensive package of measures didn't convince me," Weidmann said, according to Dow Jones Newswires, as cited by CNBC and Reuters.

Nevertheless, euro/dollar finished the day 0.46% softer at 1.1165, with traders probably already cognisant of the German's hawkish track-record.