The Swiss franc was soft today as the market sentiment remained positive, hurting demand for the currency often used as a safe haven. Markets largely ignored the strong language of US President Donald Trump regarding China.
Trump stated yesterday that he is going to confront China regardless of short-term implications for the US economy. He said:
Somebody had to take China on. This is something that had to be done. The only difference is I am doing it.
Yet markets did not pay much attention to the comments, apparently focusing on the upcoming release of Federal Reserve’s monetary policy meeting minutes.
Released yesterday, Switzerland’s trade balance surplus showed a drop to CHF 2.7 billion in July 2019 from CHF 3.2 billion in June. Both imports and exports fell, but exports were falling faster (3.9%) than imports (1.7%). But comparing the first seven months of this year with the same period of the previous year, the trade surplus widened sharply to CHF 14.9 billion from CHF 9.6 billion.
USD/CHF climbed from 0.9778 to 0.9806 as of 14:39 GMT today. EUR/CHF rallied from 1.0853 to 1.0882. CHF/JPY was up from 108.58 to 108.92 intraday but has pulled back to 108.48 by now.
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