© Reuters.
By Peter Nurse
Investing.com – The dollar gains positions at the beginning of the trading day in Europe this Thursday, but remains near the bottom of its most recent range against a background of low trading volumes due to the holidays, as the Fears surrounding the Omicron variant of Covid-19 continue to decline.
At 7:45 a.m. (CET), the, which tracks the currency’s performance against a basket of six other major currencies, rose 0.2% to 96.105, driven by higher Treasury yields The US dollar, with benchmark 10-year bond yields hitting 1.56% on Wednesday, its highest since late November.
The pair rose 0.2% to the level of 115.16, a month high and not far removed from the level of 115.51 registered in November, its highs since the beginning of 2017. The pair fell 0.3% to 1.1317, still close to one-month highs, the dips to the 1.3477 level, just below its November 19 highs recorded overnight, while the, highly risk-sensitive, rises to 0, 7249.
“Although the cases of Ómicron in the United States and Europe, among others, continue to increase, it has not yet been seen negatively in the economic data. With the activity of the markets greatly reduced due to the holidays, investors continue to set prices by assuming With the global recovery done, it is in a small pothole, not a sinkhole, “says Jeffrey Halley, an analyst at Oanda.
“The restrictions from Europe will have an impact but, for now, the markets are valuing the latest variant as a softer incarnation, despite its greater ease of contagion.”
Investors will focus on the weekly data released this Thursday, looking for more evidence that the economic recovery in the United States continues despite the growing number of Covid cases.
Initial claims for unemployment benefits totaled 205,000 during the week ending Dec. 18, unchanged from the prior period, data from the Labor Department showed last week, a level that broadly matches pre-pandemic levels. .
Everything indicates that the number of applications that will be known at 2:30 p.m. (CET) will show that the total has remained practically unchanged, which illustrates the low levels of job losses observed in recent months, since employers they focus on attracting and retaining workers to keep pace with consumer demand.
On the other hand, the pair rises 5.8%, to the level of 13.3723, and the lira reverses part of last week’s strong gains after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a plan to protect deposits in lira against currency volatility.
The Turkish lira had hit record lows as the central bank cut its official interest rates by 500 basis points since September, even though inflation soared above 20%.