FX round-up: Markets little changed ahead of Fed meeting
Currency markets were little changed ahead of the US central bank´s and Bank of England´s policy meetings which were scheduled for over the next two days.
Indeed, overall the US dollar index was off by just 0.09% to 100.83.
Similarly, dollar/yen was higher by just 0.06% to 115.09, while euro/dollar was edging up by 0.195 to 1.0654.
Cable for its part was largely unchanged, rising 0.03% to 1.2679.
The Federal Reserve was widely expected to hike its main policy rate by 25 basis points, raising the range for the Fed funds rate to between 0.50% and 0.75%.
Nevertheless, there was keen interest in to what extent the US monetary authority might tweak its short-term projections for economic growth and inflation in the States following promises for fiscal stimulus from US President-elect Donald Trump.
For the moment, the Fed would be tightening interest rates as the economy was slowing down, analysts at UBS said in a research report on 12 December, although consumer price inflation was expected to move higher in the very short-term.
Precisely in that regard, US import price data for November released on Tuesday pointed to a trend away from deflation.
The US import price index dipped by 0.3% month-on-month and 0.1% year-on-year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Commenting on the data, Blerina Uruci at Barclays Research said: "Compared with a year ago, nonpetroleum import prices fell 0.2% y/y, a significant improvement from the strong deflationary trend in 2014 and 2015. The recent upward trend suggests that the impulse from the dollar appreciation has faded."
On a similar note, the National Federation of Independent Businesses´s confidence index for small firms increased from 94.9 in October to 98.4 for November (consensus: 96.7).
"Yet more evidence that rising optimism among Trump voters has swamped the gloom of Clinton supporters, despite the rather greater numbers of the latter," analysts at Pantheon Macroeconomics said in a research note sent to clients.