(Bloomberg) -- A dollar gauge advanced in New York after US jobless claims came in slightly better than expected. The Japanese yen recovered from two days of losses as the Bank of Japan’s most hawkish board member Hajime Takata renewed his call for raising the benchmark interest rate.
- The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose as much as 0.2%, erasing earlier declines
- Applications for US unemployment benefits rose by less than expected last week, indicating that layoffs remain relatively low. Initial claims increased by 4,000 to 212,000 in the week ended Feb. 21, according to Labor Department data released Thursday
- “This reinforces that focus needs to be on inflation rather than labor market, which supports a H2 cut,” said Andrew Hazlett, a foreign-exchange trader at Monex USA.
- Safe-haven flows and month-end flows were also supporting the greenback as risk assets were selling off and oil prices rose
- “While month-end rebalancing may provide some relief for the SUD, we continue to stay cautious in a context of mixed signals for the dollar,” strategists at the Bank of America wrote Thursday
- BBDXY risk reversals across the one-week, one-month, and one-year tenors are all trading within a whisker of zero, a configuration so rare it has occurred on only 11 prior trading days in the past five years
- AUD/USD fell 0.5% to 0.7086; the Australian dollar is sensitive to risk and was underperforming all peers in the Group of 10
- USD/JPY declined 0.2% to 156.06 after two days of advances
- EUR/USD reverses gains to slip 0.1% at 1.1799
- Some information comes from FX traders familiar with the transactions who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly
Reporting by Anya Andrianova and Vassilis Karamanis
