Asia Pacific Market Open – US Dollar, FOMC Minutes, Australian Jobs Report, AUD/USD
- US Dollar[1] had best day since September, fueled by GBP[2] weakness and hawkish FOMC[3] minutes
- US Treasury doesn’t label China as a currency manipulator, but APAC shares may still decline
- The Australian Dollar may look past the jobs report, focusing on more prominent external news
We recently released our 4Q forecasts for the US Dollar in the DailyFX Trading Guides page[4]
The US Dollar clocked in its best performance in a day since September 27th, rising about 0.6 percent. It was bolstered by weakness in the British Pound amidst softer-than-expected UK CPI data[5] and perhaps Brexit pessimism bets ahead of the beginning of the EU leaders summit. Then, the US Dollar’s appreciation picked up pace as it rose with local government bond yields into the end of Wednesday.
The latter was partially fueled by the FOMC meeting minutesas expected[6]. After last week’s market selloff, the central bank offered hawkish commentary. A number of officials said that they saw a need to hike above long-run levels and that a gradual approach balances the risk of going too fast or slow. December 2018 rate hike bets rose.
During the transition from Asia to Europe, we saw aggressive selloffs in the FTSE 100[7] and Stoxx 600, the latter was undermined by weakness in the auto sector as crude oil[8] prices declined overnight. Given drops in European shares, we saw US
