The US dollar rebounded today after the yesterday’s huge drop that followed a policy announcement from the European Central Bank. While US employment data was positive for the greenback, perhaps even more supportive to the US currency were comments from ECB President Mario Draghi.
US employers added 211,000 jobs in November, a bit more than analysts had predicted. On top of that, the previous month’s huge gain was revised even higher. Yet the dollar had muted reaction to the news, even falling a bit.
What really drove the greenback higher were the remarks of the ECB President, who signaled that additional stimulus remains possible. Draghi said today:
But there is no doubt that if we had to intensify the use of our instruments to ensure that we achieve our price stability mandate, we would. There cannot be any limit to how far we are willing to deploy our instruments, within our mandate, and to achieve our mandate.
He then added:
I can say therefore with confidence â and without any complacency â that we will secure the return of inflation to 2% without undue delay, because we are currently deploying tools that we believe will achieve this, and because we can, in any case, deploy our tools further if that proves necessary.
EUR/USD dropped from 1.0939 to settle at 1.0874 today. GBP/USD was down from 1.5140 to 1.5106. USD/JPY advanced from 122.59 to 123.17.
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