020 7898 0500The US dollar strengthened on Friday as Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen acknowledged that the case for an interest rate hike has been increased recently, although provided no clear indication of when the next interest rate hike would come.
The US dollar strengthened following Yellen’s speech on Friday where she stated that ‘improvements in the US labour market and prospects of moderate economic growth has boosted the case for a rate rise’. However, her comments fell short of making the case for an immediate rise and the suggestion is that that any hike would be data dependent.
On Friday we had the release of US GDP data, revised down slightly 0.1% from the previous estimate of 1.2%, as the US economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.1%. Positive improvement in business investment from the preliminary estimate last month helped offset the negative effect of the lower figure. The dollar index, which measures the currency against a basket of 6 major currency pairs, was little changed at 94.75.
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