Currency markets — majors, crosses, central banks and the forces moving FX.
The euro closed Friday around 1.1190, roughly 93 pips above its 200-week moving average at 1.1105. France's bond selloff and a week packed with central-bank decisions leave the pair with little room for error.
Spot gold slid 2.4% to $4,041 on Thursday, its weakest since Aug 3. The drop came with an odd twist — a sinking dollar and a jumping yen — that has traders asking whether Washington intervened in FX.
The US dollar index steadied near 101.70 on Wednesday after touching a three-week low, caught between fading October hike odds and a near-certain December rate increase.
The dollar index fell 0.25% to 101.71 on Tuesday as traders weighed the US-Iran war against fresh doubts about the AI trade, with sterling, the euro, the yen and the Canadian dollar all gaining.
China's economy grew 4.5% in Q3, beating the 4.4% consensus — but Commerzbank's Volkmar Baur says the yuan's slow climb against the dollar is unlikely to accelerate, since export-dependent China needs competitiveness more than a strong currency.
The kiwi has declined for five straight quarters and now trades near $0.5655, within reach of its 54.7-cent March 2020 bottom. Thursday's September-quarter inflation print — six days before the RBNZ's October 28 rate review — will decide whether that floor holds.
The dollar index fell 0.17% to 101.87 on Friday, heading for its first weekly decline in five weeks as AI-driven market stress and fading Fed rate-hike bets knocked the greenback off its highs.
ING's Chris Turner says a ~20bp flattening of the 2-10y Treasury curve is anchoring the dollar near 18-month highs, even as hot CPI and PPI prints collide with a tech-led Treasury rally.
China is accelerating its campaign to make the yuan a global currency, moving beyond trade settlement into financing, investment and reserve holdings — while Tencent just priced 26 billion yuan in offshore bonds to fund AI.
Eurozone industrial production fell 0.5% in August, the third straight monthly decline and the steepest since January, as energy costs and weak consumer goods weighed. The euro held near 1.1220.
EUR/USD fell through the 1.1150 floor to just above 1.1100, its weakest since May 2025, after September US inflation came in hotter than expected and lifted October Fed hike odds from about 20% to roughly 50%.
Hours before September's US CPI print, MUFG argues a hot reading — plus Middle East energy shocks — could push the dollar index to 105, with EUR/USD sliding below 1.10.
