FX round-up: US dollar higher against majors

The greenback strengthened against the majors on Wednesday, ahead of the European Central Bank’s policy meeting the next day, even while slipping against most commodity currencies.

As of 18:04 BST the spot US dollar index was edging higher by 0.33% to 94.28.

Cable slipped 0.09% to 1.4385 despite a warning from the MPC’s Ian Mc Cafferty that he might sill change his spots quickly, and revert back to a hawkish stance, if weakness overseas lifted or should the pound remain unduly weak for too long, thus feeding into wage-setting in the economy.

In parallel, ex-Bank of England chief Sir Mervyn King told Bloomberg monetary policy was facing “diminishing returns”.

Euro/dollar finished 0.25% lower at 1.1330 and dollar/yen 0.44% higher to 109.69.

Commodity currencies were stronger as industrial metals and crude oil futures continued to register gains.

To take note of, analysts at Investec attributed the former to weakness in the US dollar and improved sentiment, but only slightly improved fundamentals, towards the outlook for growth in China.

Crude oil futures on the other hand gained as the Energy Information Administration, the US Department of Energy’s statistical arm, commercial oil stockpiles increased by 2.1m barrels to hit 538.6m in the five days ending on 15 April.

That was less than 2.75m build which analysts had pencilled-in and came alongside a 3.6m drop in distillate inventories.

Against Canada’s Loonie the greenback was to be seen down by 0.43% to 1.2617, whereas the Aussie was flat against the dollar at 0.7813 by the end of trading.