The yen was at a 2-week high recently. The United States dollar index has been broadly flat. The yuan dipped, although it did stay near a 4-month peak.
Concerns about a surge in coronavirus infections in the United States and elsewhere supported the safe-haven Japanese yen. Thus, On Friday, the Dollar paused.
On Thursday, more than 60,000 new COVID-19 cases were reported across the United States. This is the largest single-day tally by any country in the global pandemic so far. Thus, this discouraged some American consumers from returning to public spaces.
Some Asia Pacific cities that had appeared to have contained the disease, such as Melbourne, Tokyo, and Hong Kong, have seen new spikes in infections. Thus, this dampened the mood further.
The caution helped drive the safe-haven yen up by approximately 0.5% to a two-week high of 106.72 per Dollar.
Lee Hardman works at MUFG. He is a currency analyst there. He said that the Japanese yen has been trading within a very-tight trading rate throughout the crisis. Moreover, Hardman added that they are back towards the bottom of that range.
Dollar and Other Currencies
In Asian trading hours, the Dollar gained. Nevertheless, it later lost momentum. Thus, against the basket of currencies, it was broadly flat.
After earlier losses, the British pound and euro battled back to broadly flat levels.
Having touched a near-four month high of 6.9808 on Thursday, the Chinese yuan was down by about 0.1%. It ended up close to 7 yuan per Dollar.
This week, the Chinese currency has gained almost 1%. Hopes of capital inflows are currently supporting the currency. This is because, after Beijing indicated it wants a healthy bull market, share prices rebounded.
Dmitriy Vlasov works at East Capital in Hong. He is a portfolio adviser there. He said that higher China debt yields attract foreign capital.
He then added that they had had quite a significant inflow in the fixed income markets.
