Against a basket of six major rival currencies, the dollar was steady on the day at 90.242, not far from Wednesday’s session high of 90.40, its highest in two weeks.
The euro edged up 0.1 percent to $1.2278 but remained not far from its overnight low of $1.2246 and a far cry from last month’s 3-year high of $1.2538.
The dollar was slightly higher on the day against its Japanese counterpart at 109.37 yen.
· Congressional leaders have come to a massive budget caps deal that would amount to significant increases in spending for domestic programs and the military over the next two years.
· The US economy may strengthen more quickly than previously anticipated, according to BNP Paribas Chief Economist Paul Mortimer-Lee, allowing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates four times in 2018.
In research note that included upgrades to his growth and inflation forecasts, Mortimer-Lee also said he was revising his Fed call to include one more hike in 2018than the central bank is currently projecting.
The shift reflects a deeper rethinking about near-term US growth prospects, which Mortimer-Lee said are only partially tied to the recent tax cuts.
"We have revised up our 2018 growth forecasts for both the US and the eurozone on the back of recent Q4 GDP prints and the momentum going into Q1 2018," Mortimer-Lee wrote in his monthly outlook.
· North Korea has no intention of meeting U.S officials during the Winter Olympics that start in South Korea on Friday, state media reported, dampening hopes the Games will help resolve a tense standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons programme.
· China’s trade machine kicked up a gear in January after stumbling the previous month, with exports and imports both growing much more than expected, pointing to a strong start to the year for global demand.
Thursday’s robust data, along with last week’s strong manufacturing and service surveys, suggest China’s economy remained resilient at the start of 2018 and may even have picked up some momentum, despite crackdowns on factory pollution and riskier financing that are driving up borrowing costs.
Exports in January rose 11.1 percent from a year earlier, picking up from a 10.9 percent gain in December, official data showed. Analysts had expected growth to cool for a second straight month to 9.6 percent.
China’s import growth had sharply decelerated to 4.5 percent in December, raising fears that its domestic demand was slumping as Beijing forced northern smelters and mills to curtail production to reduce thick winter smog.
· Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Thursday he intended to stick with the central bank’s strong quantitative easing programme to achieve price stability.
· U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Thursday the United States wants to peacefully dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme but warned Pyongyang not to underestimate U.S. military strength or resolve.
· Oil prices largely reversed earlier falls on Thursday as a North Sea pipeline outage and record Chinese imports countered U.S. crude production soaring past 10million barrels per day.
Brent crude futures were at $65.51 per barrel at 0721 GMT, flat from their last close and up from a 2018-low of $65.12 a barrel reached early in the session.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were at $61.73 a barrel. That was down 3 cents from their last settlement, but a recovery from a session-low of$61.33 a barrel.
Support on Thursday came from the second outage in as many months on the 450,000 bpd Forties pipeline network, Britain’s biggest, which supplies much of the crude underpinning Brent futures, although operator Ineos said it would likely restart the pipeline by Thursday.
Reference: Reuters, CNBC
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