By CountingPips.com
The US Dollar has been mixed in forex trading today against most of the major currencies on a day with little economic data released from the US. The dollar has lost ground to the New Zealand dollar and the Canadian dollar while gaining against the Japanese yen, British pound sterling and the Swiss franc. The dollar has been virtually unchanged on the day versus the euro and the Australian dollar, according to currency data at the end of the US session.
The US stock markets, meanwhile, had a winning session today with the Dow gaining by approximately 80 points, the Nasdaq increasing 31 points and the S&P 500 up by over 11 points.
In commodities, Oil traded slightly lower to the $99.80 level while gold futures rose by $17.20 to $1497.00 per ounce.
Economic news releases today showed that the US FOMC minutes indicated the Federal Reserve Committee was deliberating on the best timing and procedure to exit their quantitative easing program and zero interest rate policy to work towards more of a normalization in policies. The QE policy is scheduled to expire in June.
David Song, currency analyst at DailyFx.com, commented on the release saying, “The majority of the FOMC said they favored raising the benchmark interest rate before unwinding its asset purchases, with the group debating a possible exit strategy at the policy meeting earlier this month. However, the Fed went onto say that the recent discussion should not be interpreted as an imminent tightening in monetary policy as the committee continues to see a “moderate” recovery in the world’s largest economy. The minutes revealed that QE3 remains off the table unless there’s a marked shift in the economic outlook, and noted that the first step to normalizing monetary policy would be to cease MBS reinvestment.”
Looking ahead to tomorrow and the important news releases:
01:00 New Zealand consumer confidence index
08:30 United Kingdom Retail Sales
09:00 Swiss ZEW Survey
12:30 United States initial jobless claims/continuing claims
13:45 Eurozone ECB Trichet Speech
13:45 United States consumer comfort index
14:00 United States existing-home sales
14:00 United States Philadelphia Fed Survey
14:00 United States Leading Indicator Index
14:30 Canada BOC Review