Dollar maintains a firm undertone ahead of Friday's U.S. jobs data: March 08, 2017

Market Review - 07/03/2017  22:23GMT  

Dollar maintains a firm undertone ahead of Friday's U.S. jobs data

The greenback gained against majority of its peers on Tuesday on increasing speculation that the Federal Reserve will hike its rates this month unless U.S. releases a poor jobs report later this week. 

Versus the Japanese yen, dollar traded sideways in Asia and briefly edged lower to session low at 113.73 in European morning, however, price found renewed buying there and rose to session highs of 114.14 at New York open before retreating on cross-buying in yen. 

Although the single currency rebounded from Asian low at 1.0573 to session high at 1.0603 in European morning, price pared its gains and dropped to an intra-day low at 1.0558 in European morning, price later trading sideways in subdued New York session. 

Although the British pound edged up to session high at 1.2253 in Asia, price pared its gains and tumbled to 1.2183 in European morning on cross-selling of sterling especially vs euro together with renewed Brexit concerns, then lower to a fresh 7-week bottom of 1.2170 in New York morning before staging a short-covering rebound to 1.2212. 

In other news, Germany's Schaeuble said 'will meet U.S. counterpart Mnuchin Mar 16 in Berlin to prepare for G20; has not received convincing argument against German current account surplus; no one can say Germany achieves its current account surplus thru ccy manipulation; more needs to be done to strengthen financial mkt regulations at G20; China n Germany both favour free trade n open global mkts; wants a level playing field for investments by foreign companies in China; Brexit negotiations will be very complicated n Germany is open to new forms of cooperation with Birtain; main goal is that we keep remaining EU 27 together; Brexit negotiations shud end in a way that bring in EU single mkt has more benefits than being outside of it.' 

On the data front, in a report, Eurostat said that GDP rose to a seasonally adjusted 0.4%, from 0.4% in the preceding quarter. Analysts had expected GDP to rise 0.4% in the last quarter.

Data to be released on Wednesday: 

UK RICS house price, China CPI, PPI, Swiss unemployment, ECB interest rate decision, U.S. import price, export price and Canada capacity utilisation.