The US dollar has ended Friday’s trading with gains as traders continued to speculate about the possibility of an interest rate hike in 2015. Yet the currency was moving down before closing, making it hard to determine how it will behave at the start of the next week.
Yesterday, Janet Yellen, head of the Federal Reserve, signaled in her speech about a decent probability of monetary tightening before the year-end. Speculations about possible interest rate lift-off intensified after the final revision of US gross domestic product showed economic growth in the second quarter was faster than it had been estimated previously. It is important to note that despite all the talks about higher rates CME FedWatch shows just 39 percent probability of a lift-off in December and even lower in October.
There were also adverse factors for dollar in the form of the falling indicator of US services sector and the worsening consumer sentiment reported by University of Michigan. They perhaps contributed to the softening of the dollar by the end of trading.
EUR/USD was down from 1.1229 to 1.1115 intraday bounced to 1.1205 before closing. GBP/USD dropped from 1.5241 to 1.5199 today, and its daily low of 1.5135 was the weakest rate since May 5. USD/JPY closed at 120.47 after opening at 120.06 and rallying to 121.22.
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