Explore the world.

Assess underlying market conditions and fundamentals in the world's major economies.

World

Stay ahead.

Follow the biggest stories in markets and economics in real time.

Subscribe

Get insight into the latest trends and developments in global currency markets with breaking news updates and research reports delivered right to your inbox.

After signing up, you will receive regular newsletters from Corpay, and may unsubscribe at any time. View Corpay’s Privacy Policy

EUR

Silent night

Unsurprisingly, with the US President’s Day holiday and no major news across the other regions, it has been a quiet start to the week. European equities eased back slightly, tracking the modest falls in US S&P500 futures (now -0.3%) with the US Fed’s higher-for-longer interest rate outlook continuing to sink in. European bond yields ticked up 2-5bps across their respective curves, with some ‘hawkish’ comments from the ECB’s Rehn playing a role. According to Rehn inflation is “excessively high”, further rate hikes by the ECB beyond March seem “logical”, and the bank shouldn’t rush to start discussing rate cuts. The...

Read More Read More

Almighty Dollar Reigns Supreme

The greenback is reading its own obituary once again, defying early January’s almost-universally bearish sentiment to surge toward a six-week trade-weighted high. Data released yesterday showed initial jobless claims fell by 1,000 to a seasonally-adjusted 194,000 last week, pushing the four-week average to 189,500. Despite widespread fears of a slowdown, employers continue to add jobs at a pace consistent with strong economic growth, and laid-off workers are finding new roles quickly. This comes on top of a slew of data releases that point to robust growth and strong underlying inflation pressures in the US economy. Employers added more than half...

Read More Read More

Currency Market Sub-Plots Lift Greenback

The dollar is creeping upward as conflicting cross-currents in the foreign exchange markets contrive to keep most majors tightly rangebound. Yields are broadly flat, and equity futures are setting up for a slightly weaker open. Mexico’s Banxico yesterday became the second central bank—after the Reserve Bank of Australia—to defy increasingly-dovish policy expectations, sending the peso soaring by raising rates by half a percentage point in a move that surprised virtually every observer. In a statement accompanying the decision, policymakers said “Given the dynamics of core inflation, on this occasion it is necessary to continue with the magnitude of the reference...

Read More Read More

Sentiment Improves as Fed Rhetoric Remains Balanced

The dollar is softer and Treasury yields are subsiding after the chair of the Federal Reserve avoided walking back last week’s observation that signs of “disinflation” were beginning to appear – something that many saw as a communications error at the time.  Jerome Powell essentially repeated last week’s message in a question and answer session at the Economic Club in Washington yesterday. Speaking with David Rubenstein, Powell noted that Friday’s jobs data was “certainly strong – stronger than anyone I know expected,” warning that the process involved in getting inflation down to target would be “bumpy”. “The reality is we’re...

Read More Read More

Trend Reversal Rumbles Across Currency Markets

The dollar is continuing its ascent and global markets are in risk-off mode as traders unwind bets on easier monetary policy in the aftermath of Friday’s juggernaut jobs report. Futures are down sharply, Treasury yields are up, the greenback is trading near a three week high, and currencies elsewhere are on the defensive after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employers added 517,000 jobs to payrolls in January, while revising previous months up. Friday’s data looks too good to be true, with seasonal adjustment issues likely playing a role – but it nonetheless showed that underlying momentum in the...

Read More Read More