020 7898 0500It was another good day for the dollar yesterday, after what was a fairly disastrous start to the year (exacerbated by Mnuchin’s comments at Davos). There appears to be a period of dollar strength and one wonders how long this will continue and, if it does, what kind of gains it will make.
We learned that mortgage applications in the US increased by 0.7% up to 2 February 2018 following a 2.6% drop in the previous period, while Donald Trump called the recent stock market fall a ‘big mistake’. Eloquent as ever. Chicago’s Federal Reserve President, Charles Evans, said that US interest rates should not rise before the middle of the year, but this did little to affect the dollar. For now, anyway. Three rate hikes over the year has been mentioned, but there has recently been more and more talk of four or five rate hikes.
Today we have the initial jobless claims up to 27 January 2018 which will be interesting to see.
