The Australian dollar rises slightly after the RBA announces more rate hikes, but the yen falls.

Hong Kong (Reuters) – The Australian dollar went up a little bit after the governor of the central bank said that more rate hikes were likely in Australia. However, fears of a slowdown in global growth kept gains in check, and the Japanese yen retested a 24-year low.

Investors in currency markets are still paying a lot of attention to what central banks do around the world and the possibility of aggressive interest rate hikes.

The Australian dollar was up 0.26 percent to $0.6954, adding to the day’s small gains.This came after Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Philip Lowe said that there would be a lot more policy tightening in the future.

The RBA minutes from its June meeting showed that the central bank was worried about inflation. At that meeting, rates were raised by 50 basis points, which was more than expected.

But analysts said that the Aussie’s long-term path would depend more on the outlook for global growth, which did not look good for the Aussie.

“I think that global factors will have a bigger effect on the Australian dollar than local ones, and we now think that the U.S. dollar will go up this year because we expect a sharp slowdown.” “We think the Australian dollar will rise to 65 U.S. cents by the end of this year,” FX strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Carol Kong said (OTC: CMWAY).

Other than that, the Japanese yen stayed weak at 135.1 yen per dollar, which is close to a 24-year low of 135.58 yen that was hit early last week. This is because the Bank of Japan crushed any small hopes of a change in policy on Friday and reaffirmed its commitment to ultra-easy monetary settings.

The euro stayed about the same at $1.0516 because European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde’s comments on Monday about the need to stop the risk of financial fragmentation between euro countries in their tracks overshadowed the fact that French President Emmanuel Macron lost his majority in parliament.

The Australian and the euro were also helped by the fact that the markets as a whole were more risk-taking. Stock futures in the United States, for example, increased by more than 1%.[MKTS/GLOB]

At 104.38, the dollar index, which compares the dollar to six major currencies, was a little bit lower.

This week, the most important thing for the dollar is Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s two-day semi-annual report to Congress, which starts on Wednesday.

Later on Tuesday, two more Fed policymakers and two speakers from the Bank of England will speak in public. Traders will be paying close attention to what they say for clues about where interest rates are going.

Sterling was at $1.227, up from a two-year low of $1.1934 last week.

Bitcoin was at $20,500. In recent days, it hasn’t been able to break strongly above or below the psychologically important $20,000 level.