Dollar Falls on Hurricane Damage and Jackson Hole Silence

August 28, 2017 Share Print 0

An already weak dollar dropped to 16-month lows against a basket of major currencies on Monday, as flooding caused by Tropical Storm Harvey paralysed the United States’ fourth-biggest city and drove worries about a hit to the economy.

The greenback had already fallen sharply on Friday, after U.S. Federal Reserve Janet Yellen failed to mention monetary policy at the closely watched Jackson Hole meeting in Wyoming. Investors saw this as evidence that Yellen was comfortable with their rate hike expectations – currently only one is priced in by the end of next year.

The euro, meanwhile, climbed to a 2-1/2-year high close to $1.20 EUR=, extending gains made at the end of last week after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi held back from talking down the buoyant currency at the same meeting.

The dollar index .DXY – which measures the U.S. currency against six major rivals with the euro given the heaviest weighting – was down 0.3 percent by 1200 GMT at 92.501, having earlier fallen to as low as 92.372, its weakest since early May 2016.

via Reuters

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Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse

Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.