Investing.com - The yen gained in early Asia on Wednesday as investors noted comments from a key Fed official and mulled the state of the U.S. presidential race following the first of three debates ahead of the early November polls.
USD/JPY changed hands at 100.33, down 0.09%, while AUD/USD traded flat.
Earlier, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer said Tuesday that the U.S. economy has started to generate better wages, but they need to go higher.
"Finally incomes of working people began to rise faster than incomes of people higher up" on the income scale, Fischer said while answering questions at Howard University after a speech. The former IMF chief economist said his comments were general in nature and when asked about the possibility of a no-interest rate economy said: "I don't like it." But he said the point on rates was not about monetary policy in the U.S.
Also on the radar of the markets, OPEC members, led by Saudi Arabia and other big Middle East crude exporters, such as Iran and Iraq, will meet non-OPEC producer Russia at the International Energy Forum in Algeria on Wednesday at 14:00GMT (10:00AM ET).
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was last quoted at 95.35.
Overnight, the dollar pushed higher against the other major currencies on Tuesday, after data showing that U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly jumped in September to more than a nine-year high boosted optimism over the strength of the economy.
The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index increased to 104.1 this month from a reading of 101.8 in August, whose figure was revised from a previously reported 101.1. That was its highest level since August 2007. Analysts had expected the index to slip to 99.0 in September.
The greenback also found support as analysts considered that Hillary Clinton did better than her rival Donald Trump during Monday night’s Presidential debate.
Markets tend to see Clinton as a status quo candidate, while few are sure what a Trump presidency might mean for international trade deals or the U.S. economy. Markets are currently pricing in an 8.3% chance of a rate hike at November's meeting, according to Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool.