Thursday, the United States dollar extended its recovery from last week and settled to a one-week high against its major currency rivals. According to the dollar index, the dollar settled at 90.099, which was 0.1% higher from the greenback’s previous close. The dollar capped a high of 90.166 in early trade, which was considered as the currency’s highest since February 13, 2018, which exceeded the three-year low 88.25 capped last week.
These positive stance of the dollar was due to Federal Reserve’s January meeting which indicated that a wide number of policymakers are confident enough they need to increase interest rates soon. These claims heightened investors and analysts bets that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates four times this year.
In accordance to this, Hirofumi Suzuki, an economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in Singapore mentioned that a March rate hike is likely a done deal, along with comments that there seems to be an update on the stance of the economic outlook, which increases investors’ and analysts’ hopes of the Fed conducting four interest rate hikes this year. However, Hirofumi Suzuki added that he doubts whether that’s the Federal Reserve’s true intent.