The US dollar rate was almost unchanged against the euro and the pound sterling on Friday morning, but demonstrated an active rise in pair with the yen on the results of the Bank of Japan meeting.
The ICE-calculated index showing the U.S. dollar’s performance against six currencies (euro, Swiss franc, yen, Canadian dollar, pound sterling and Swedish krona) was down less than 0.1% during this morning’s session. The broader WSJ Dollar Index was up less than 0.1%.
The euro/dollar pair is trading at $1.0589 as of 8:00 a.m., versus $1.0585 at the close of Thursday’s session.
The pound sterling is trading at $1.1925 versus $1.1924 at the close of last session.
Foreign exchange market participants took a wait-and-see attitude ahead of Friday’s publication of statistical data on the U.S. labor market.
The Labor Department report will be released at 3:30 p.m. and analysts polled by Trading Economics expect it to show the unemployment rate will remain at 3.4 percent and the number of jobs in the U.S. economy will climb by 205,000.
Strong labor market data could be an important argument for the Fed to raise interest rates by 50 basis points at the March meeting. The market generally expects just such a scenario, although last week’s consensus forecasts called for a hike of just 25 bps.
Meanwhile, the dollar-yen exchange rate rose 0.4% to 136.65 yen against 136.14 yen the day before.
On Friday, the Bank of Japan expectedly didn’t change the main parameters of the monetary policy on the results of the meeting, which was the last for the head of the central bank Haruhiko Kuroda who heads the bank since 2013.
Japan’s parliament this week approved Kazuo Ueda as the next head of the central bank. He will lead the Bank of Japan on April 8, when Kuroda’s term expires. The next meeting will be held under his leadership on April 27-28.
