By: Barbara Zigah
Ahead of this weekends’ Group of 20 meeting in South Korea, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, commented that he plans to use the meeting as a forum to focus attention on the need to rebalance global economies, and move closer to a coordinated exchange rate policy.
With that, investors pushed the U.S. Dollar briefly higher against the Japanese Yen and the single currency Euro. As reported at 2:25 p.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the Dollar traded at 81.84 Yen, before falling back to 8.120 Yen, still ahead .1% in the day’s trading. Against the Euro, the Dollar traded at $1.3872, up .4% in the day’s trading.
The U.S. Dollar Index traded at 77.459 .DXY, a rise of .4%, and off of the 10-month trough of 76.144 .DXY struck last week.
Over the past several weeks, the U.S. Dollar has been under significant selling pressure, on speculation that the Federal Reserve will institute further quantitative easing measures at the November meeting of the Bank’s Federal Open Market Committee; in anticipation, the markets have become dollar short.
This weekend, the market’s focus of attention will turn to the G20 meeting, and investors speculate that some sort of a grand currency bargain may be in the offing.