The dollar is opening the week slightly lower after a bounce in Chinese manufacturing activity encouraged traders to start the new quarter with some cautious optimism.<\/p>\n
The British pound, meanwhile, has also recouped some of the losses it suffered at the end of a chaotic week in U.K. politics, although the respite looks set to be brief, given weekend press reports that the country\u2019s parties are tentatively planning for a general election to break the deadlock on Brexit.<\/p>\n
At 03:00 AM ET (0800 GMT), the\u00a0<\/span>U.S. dollar index<\/a><\/span>, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, was at 96.688, down some 0.2% from its closing levels on Friday. It dipped after China\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Caixin<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>purchasing managers\u2019 index rose sharply to its highest in eight months, a bounce that took it comfortably past the 50 reading that typically represents unchanged levels of activity.<\/p>\n The bounce hasn\u2019t been uniform. PMI readings in\u00a0<\/span>France<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0<\/span>Germany<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0<\/span>Italy<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>all fell, staying below the 50 level in a blow to hopes for a clearer signal of the economy bottoming out after a weak first quarter.<\/p>\n The\u00a0<\/span>euro’s<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>reaction was muted, ticking up slightly to $1.1246.<\/p>\n Elsewhere, the Turkish\u00a0<\/span>lira<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>slid again after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan\u2019s AK Party appeared to lose municipal elections in all three of the country\u2019s biggest cities. It conceded defeat in the capital Ankara and in Izmir, and was not claiming overall victory in Istanbul, the country\u2019s biggest city, against a backdrop of delays and allegations by AK\u2019s opponents of vote manipulation.<\/p>\n In the U.K., a fresh round of parliamentary votes is due later on alternatives to Prime Minister Theresa May\u2019s EU withdrawal bill, but nothing over the weekend suggested that the House of Commons has found a way to break the current deadlock.<\/p>\n Simon Derrick, chief currency strategist with BNY Mellon in London, said in a weekend note that the two-day drop in\u00a0<\/span>sterling<\/a><\/span>\u00a0<\/span>on Thursday and Friday had been the biggest since the 2016 referendum. He said there is now the possibility that the opposition Labour Party could table a no-confidence vote in the government with the aim of triggering another general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The dollar is opening the week slightly lower after a bounce in Chinese manufacturing activity encouraged traders to start the new quarter with some cautious optimism. The British pound, meanwhile, has also recouped some of the losses it suffered at the end of a chaotic week in U.K. politics, although Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homepage","category-latest-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1328,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions\/1328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}