• The dollar index against a basket of six major currencies rose to a seven-month high on Friday, getting a boost as the euro sagged after a cautious European Central Bank signalled it will keep interest rates at record lows well into next year.
The dollar index was up 0.3 percent at 95.074 after touching 95.108, its highest since November 2017.
• While many may welcome the more hawkish stance from the Federal Reserve after a decade of record-low interest rates, one economist warned that it may actually lead to an economic slowdown.
The Federal Reserve hiked rates for the second time this year Wednesday and is looking at two more for 2018 amid observations of a strong outlook for the U.S. economy. But Jim McCaughan, the chief executive of Principal Global Investors, said there are risks involved.
"The way I interpret this is, one further rate increase is probably the right answer for the rest of the year," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" Thursday, espousing a more doveish route for the monetary policy-setting body. His investment fund, based in the U.S., has $311 billion in assets under management.
"Two further is probably what they'll do, but they run the risk then of getting to the ultimate level fairly quickly and causing some slowness in the economy, which will bring about an inverted yield curve much sooner than it needs to happen."
• The Bank of Japan maintained its ultra-loose monetary policy on Friday and downgraded its view on inflation in a fresh blow to its long-held 2 percent price goal, further complicating the central bank’s path to rolling back its crisis-era stimulus.
As widely expected, the Bank of Japan kept its short-term interest rate target at minus 0.1 percent and a pledge to guide 10-year government bond yields around zero percent.
• Oil prices were largely steady on Friday, while Saudi Arabia and Russia, architects of a producer deal to cut output, indicated ahead of a key OPEC meeting in Vienna next week that production could rise.
Brent crude LCOc1 had edged up 3 cents to $75.97 a barrel by 0658 GMT, after settling down 80 cents the session before.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude CLc1 was up 5 cents at $66.94 a barrel, having settled the last session up 25 cents. It touched a two-week high of $67.16 on Thursday.
Reference: Reuters, DailyFX, Bloomberg
Thai
Eng