Forex Market Update: Euro Steady against Broadly Lower U.S. Dollar
The euro held steady against the U.S. dollar on Thursday despite a rate cut being announced from the European Central Bank (ECB). Following the announcement, the euro momentarily slipped against the U.S. dollar to trade at 1.3150 but recovered promptly.
Earlier today, the ECB, as expected, slashed benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 0.5% in an effort to shore up the euro zone economy, which in the recent past has started to show signs of pull-back after showing some resilience.
At around 8:30 a.m. EST, the euro was up 0.18% to trade at $1.3205.
The U.S. dollar was broadly lower on Thursday after the Federal Reserve’s reaffirmed its commitment towards continuing economic stimulating measures on Wednesday. The Fed left its benchmark interest rate unchanged and said that it will continue with its monthly $85 billion worth monthly bond purchase program.
At last check, the WSJ $ Index was down 0.41%.
The Aussie dollar however slipped against the U.S. dollar on Thursday after HSBC downwardly revised its reading on Chinese PMI for the month of April.
The HSBC China Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to 50.4 in April from March’s 51.6 m which was slightly lower than preliminary reading of 50.5.
The Australian dollar, which is highly commodity-linked currency, tends to feel the pressure whenever top commodity importing countries such as China show signs of slowdown in manufacturing activities.
The Australian dollar was last down 0.28% to $1.0250.
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Post Written By: Ed Liston
Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.
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