Ringgit Ends Higher Against US Dollar

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 (Bernama) -- The ringgit ended the first day of the week on a positive note as it continued to gather strength against the US dollar Monday, capitalising on the greenback’s weakness since last week. At 6pm, the local note finished at an intra-day high of 3.9540/9580 against the greenback from 3.9700/9730 at Friday’s close. FXTM Chief Market Strategist, Hussein Sayed, said many traders were caught by surprise by the extent of the greenback’s decline over the last week as the US dollar index fell below 91 for the first time since January 2015, and Friday’s 0.96 per cent drop, was the second biggest since January 2017. “More surprisingly, the US data released over the last week certainly doesn’t justify a US dollar sell-off. US core consumer prices recorded their largest increase in 11 months in December, rising 0.3 per cent,” he said. Hussein said the two tier-one economic reports sent expectations for an interest rate increase in March to above 72 per cent from just a 50 per cent chance last month. “This clearly suggests that internal data did not inspire the dollar selloff, but rather, external developments played a role,” he said. However, at the close, it was traded lower against a basket of major currencies. It depreciated against the Singapore dollar to 2.9932/9971 from Friday's close of 2.9895/9924, while vis-a-vis the yen, the local note weakened to 3.5760/5806 from 3.5727/5761 on Friday. It fell against the euro at 4.8468/8533 from 4.8128/8181 last week and eased against the pound to 5.4526/4597 from 5.4040/4084 previously. -- BERNAMA