In Asia on Thursday morning, the dollar was going down. The biggest thing on the market was still the meeting of the European Central Bank and the policy decisions it would make later in the day.
The US Dollar Index, which measures the value of the dollar against a basket of other currencies, was down 0.09 percent at 102.45 (4:29 AM GMT) at 12:29 p.m. ET.
The USD/JPY pair went down 0.12% to 134.09. In the morning session on Thursday, the yen came back from a 20-year low, even though the Bank of Japan kept its policies the same.
The AUD/USD pair fell 0.13 percent to 0.7183, while the NZD/USD pair rose 0.08 percent to 0.6452.
The GBP/USD exchange rate fell 0.04 percent to 1.2535, while the USD/CNY pair fell 0.10 percent to 6.6768.
China’s exports grew by 16.9% compared to the same month last year, according to data released by the government earlier in the day. This was better than what the market had expected, as COVID-19 restrictions and other problems with production and logistics were lessened. Investing.com made predictions that the growth would be 8%, but in April, the growth was only 3.9%.
Later in the day, the ECB will announce its policy decision. Most people expect that it will end its long-running programme of buying assets.
If ECB President Christine Lagarde “leans toward a more hawkish interest rate move in the future,” that will help the euro-dollar, said Carol Kong, a currency strategist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
“I don’t think a rate hike today is very likely because the ECB has talked a lot about sequencing and said it will stop buying assets before raising interest rates. However, given that inflation is at a record high and there are economic reasons for a rate hike, I wouldn’t completely rule it out,” Kong said.
Due to high euro zone inflation, the market expects the ECB to raise interest rates by 50 basis points.
Investors still worry that a recession will happen because interest rates are going up. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Wednesday that the war in Ukraine has made the world’s economic outlook worse and cut its growth forecasts. This is bad news on top of the already bad news about global growth.
On Friday, we will get data on the U.S. consumer price index (CPI), China’s CPI, and the producer price index (PPI).
Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, was worth around $30,000 at the time.
