Dollar eases after jump in US jobless claims; Fed in focus

Shafaq News / The dollar retreated on Friday, dragged down by lower U.S. Treasury yields after a spike in weekly jobless claims raised hopes that a peak in U.S. interest rates was near, as the focus turned to the upcoming week packed with central bank meetings.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits surged to the highest in more than 1-1/2 years last week, data on Thursday showed, though layoffs are probably not accelerating as the data covered the Memorial Day holiday, which could have injected some volatility.

Nonetheless, that was enough to knock the U.S. dollar to a more than two-week low against a basket of currencies in the previous session, as investors took the data as a sign that the U.S. labour market was slowing.

The dollar index last stood at 103.41 in Asia trade on Friday, having lost more than 0.7% in the previous session, its largest daily decline in weeks.

The index, which measures the U.S. currency against six major peers, is down 0.6% for the week, set for its worst week since mid-March.

Against the Japanese yen , the greenback dipped to a one-week low of 138.765, tracking a slide in U.S. Treasury yields. It was fetching 139.27 per dollar.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield last stood at 3.7317%, after falling 7 basis points on Thursday. The two-year yield , which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations, steadied at 4.5261%.

"We do think that the U.S., like many economies, will go through a shallow recession this year. So that'll show up in payrolls numbers and jobless claims and these sorts of numbers," said Jarrod Kerr, chief economist at Kiwibank.

Elsewhere, sterling touched a near one-month high of $1.2564, while the kiwi eased 0.11% to $0.6089.

The Turkish lira tumbled more than 1% against the dollar to a record low of 23.54 after President Tayyip Erdogan appointed Hafize Gaye Erkan, a finance executive in the United States, to head Turkey's central bank.

(Reuters)