The U.S. dollar inched up on Wednesday in Asia after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point as expected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. dollar index<\/a> that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies was up 0.1% to 97.205 by 12:33 AM ET (04:33 GMT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy colleagues and I took this action to help the U.S. economy keep strong in the face of new risks to the economic outlook,\u201d Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told a press conference in Washington. \u201cThe spread of the coronavirus has brought new challenges and risks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Tuesday, the World Health Organization said the novel coronavirus doesn\u2019t transmit as efficiently as influenza but the fatality rate is higher at 3.4%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Number of infections continued to rise globally this week, as JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM<\/a>) & Co. asked thousands of U.S. employees to work from home, and Ford Motor (NYSE:F<\/a>) Co. banned all business travel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, global finance ministers and central bank governors held a rare conference call yesterday and pledged to \u201cdo whatever it takes\u201d to support a slowing economy due to the virus outbreak, but did not confirmed any concrete plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The USD\/CNY<\/a> pair rose 0.3% at 6.9350.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) kept its short-term borrowing costs steady on Wednesday, despite the Fed\u2019s emergency policy rate cut overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The decision by the PBOC on Wednesday came just hours after its U.S. counterpart delivered a rate cut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The USD\/JPY<\/a> pair was up 0.2% to 107.37.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wednesday’s data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed the Australian economy<\/a> accelerated by 0.5% last quarter. Meanwhile, the previous quarter\u2019s GDP was revised upwards to show 0.6% increase from 0.4% earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Economists had predicted a quarterly rate of 0.3%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The AUD\/USD<\/a> pair and the NZD\/USD<\/a> pair both rose 0.2%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. dollar inched up on Wednesday in Asia after the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates by half a percentage point as expected. The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies was up 0.1% to 97.205 by 12:33 AM ET (04:33 GMT). \u201cMy colleagues and 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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","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=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1972,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forexvarsity.com\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}