USD rate today: USD rate today: Check U.S Dollar against Euro, Yen, Sterling

The US dollar remained steady on Monday after a weekly loss as markets awaited the results of peace talks in the Middle East and signals on the timing of central bank interest rate hikes. The dollar index fell last week on hopes that an agreement would be reached between the United States and Iran on opening the Strait of Hormuz shipping line for oil. Oil jumped in early trading after Israel ordered its troops to advance towards Lebanon in the war against Iran-backed Hezbollah.

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would soon decide on a proposed deal to extend the Iran ceasefire. US employment data will be in focus later in the week as Federal Reserve officials signal that the US central bank may need to raise interest rates if the war accelerates already high inflation.

“The USD will be greatly affected by developments in the US-Iran war and the US non-farm payrolls report for May,” said Joseph Capurso, head of FX at Commonwealth Bank of Australia. “Once the Strait reopens, over time the oil price will fall and interest rates will return as a larger impact on the USD,” he added in his note.

The dollar index against a basket of currencies, including the dollar and the yen and the euro, remained flat at 99.00 after a 0.4 percent decline last week. The euro fell by 0.08 percent to $1,165. The yen lost 0.08 percent to 159.41 per dollar. Sterling lost 0.07 percent to $1.3449.

A proposed deal would extend the US-Iran ceasefire for 60 days while negotiators work on contentious issues and allow traffic to resume through the waterway, which in normal times is a conduit for a fifth of global crude oil and LNG shipments.

A senior Iranian source told Reuters the deal was close but not yet ratified.
U.S. nonfarm payrolls data due on June 5 is expected to show a 4.3 percent unemployment rate and an increase of 85,000 jobs, according to a Reuters poll on Friday. Financial markets believe the Fed’s next move will be to raise its key interest rate from its current range of 3.50 percent, possibly to 3.75 percent by the end of the year. Officials were expecting a rate cut before the start of the Iran war. The European Central Bank should raise interest rates this month even if a US-Iran peace deal is reached, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel told Reuters last week. He will speak in South Korea on Monday.

Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda’s speech on Wednesday is expected to give signals about whether the central bank will continue to raise interest rates next week.

Pausing the central bank’s tapering of government bond purchases is increasingly seen as a preferred option, although a consensus on the decision has not yet been reached within the BOJ, two sources familiar with the negotiations said.

Japan’s finance ministry said on Friday that the government spent 11.7 trillion yen ($73.40 billion) intervening in foreign exchange markets last month to support the yen, confirming what traders widely suspected.

The Australian dollar was trading flat against the US dollar at $0.7181. New Zealand kiwi fell 0.17 percent to $0.5978.