Investing.com – The dollar continued its bullish trend ahead of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s second appearance this week later in the day.
The US dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of currencies gained 0.04% to reach a five-week high at 90.65 at 10:52pm ET thanks to Powell’s hawkish tone of rate hikes on Tuesday.
Powell’s upbeat remarks on the U.S. economy sent the dollar to break the 90 handle and the momentum has not faded as the markets await more signals from him for a potential fourth rate hike. He is to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday.
The USD/JPY pair changed hands, trading 0.06% higher at 106.74. Bank of Japan’s policy board member Goushi Kataoka called for more easing efforts to achieve the central bank’s 2% inflation target, saying the price situation in Japan was no longer deflationary. But he warned that achieving the 2% inflation target during the 2019 fiscal year is unlikely.
The AUD/USD pair plunged 0.43% to 0.7728. The Aussie tumbled to a new low level this year following a big miss in Q4 CAPEX. The country’s Q4 seasonally adjusted CAPEX fell 0.2% QoQ, failing to meet market estimates of a 0.9% growth.
Elsewhere, the People’s bank of China set the fix rate against the dollar at 6.3360 versus the previous rate of 6.2394. The USD/CNY traded at 6.3408, up 0.17%. China Caixin manufacturing PMI read 51.6, beating the estimates of 51.3. But the upbeat data did not give the sentiment-sensitive Aussie a lift.