© Reuters
By Peter Nurse
Investing.com – The dollar remains virtually unchanged this Thursday, with the Japanese yen being the most in-demand safe haven, as concerns mount over the Covid variant Omicron, which has weighed down on the South African rand and the Australian dollar.
At 8:50 am (CET), the, which tracks this currency against a basket of six other major currencies, rises slightly to 96.090, consolidating in the middle of its range of the last two weeks.
The pair fell slightly to the level of 1.1315, it rose 0.2% to 1.3299, and the pair points a rise of 0.4% to 113.23, a kind of recovery from the lows recorded on Tuesday at 112.53, a level not seen since October 11.
In addition, the, very risk-sensitive, rises 0.1% to the level of 0.7110, not very far from Tuesday’s lows of 0.7063, its lowest level since the beginning of November last year, while the falls 0.3% to 15.9760, after a rise of more than 1%.
“G7 currency volatility is at its highest point of the year and it is not difficult to see why,” analysts at ING (AS 🙂 say in a note. “Over the last week, the news about the Omicron variant has introduced a new and, so far, unsized in the global asset markets.”
Added to the concern was the news late on Wednesday that the United States has reported its first case of the Omicron variant, while the number of new cases reported in South Africa, where the variant was first discovered, has risen. it doubled from Tuesday to Wednesday, becoming the dominant strain, with almost three-quarters of the cases.
Much is still unknown about the new variant, which has spread to at least two dozen countries in about three weeks, but the World Health Organization said Wednesday that it hopes to have more information on its transmissibility in a few days. However, Australia’s chief medical officer, Paul Kelly, has said there is no evidence to suggest that it is more dangerous than the Delta variant. On the other hand, GlaxoSmithKline (LON 🙂 has said that its antiviral treatment Sotrovimab, which has already been approved in the UK, appears to be 79% effective against the Omicron variant.
The dollar should continue to receive some support after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated on the second day of his appearance before Congress on Wednesday that the central bank is willing to consider a more rapid reduction in its buy program. bond at its December meeting, which could lead to interest rate hikes earlier than expected. Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said in an interview Wednesday that she expects two 25 basis point gains next year.
The main economic data of the United States this Thursday will be the publication of the weekly number of the, another indicator of the state of the American labor market. This comes after he reported an increase of 534,000 in November, less than in October but more than expected, and before the long-awaited government official is published on Friday.
On the other hand, the pair rises 1.5% to 13.4581, with the lira near record lows, after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan abruptly replaced his Finance Minister Lutfi Elvan, suggesting disagreements within the administration over the policy of aggressive interest rate cuts despite rampant inflation.