FOREX – U.S. Dollar Down Ahead of Jobless Claims Data; Pound Falls

By Gina Lee

Investing.com – The U.S dollar continued a week-long decline into Tuesday morning as investors await jobless claims data due later in the day.

Forecasts complied by investing.com predict a million claims as the number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise.

“It could be difficult for the markets to digest weekly jobless claims. Bad numbers are expected and priced in to a certain extent, but there are people who think things will get even worse,” Tohru Sasaki, JP Morgan Securities’ head of Japan markets research, told CNBC.

On a more positive note for the greenback, he added “In the end this may support the dollar as investors choose to bring their money home.”

Even the news that the U.S. Senate passed a $2 trillion relief package failed to give the dollar a boost.

The U.S. dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies, slid 0.19% to 100.810 by 11:40 PM ET (03:40 AM GMT).

The AUD/USD pair fell 0.77% to 0.5912 and the NZD/USD pair lost 0.33% to 0.5828 as investors continued to avoid excessive risk. The Antipodean pair’s close links to the global commodity trade led investors to liquidate their positions into U.S. dollar deposits earlier in the month.

The USD/JPY pair was down 0.49% to 110.64 and the USD/CNY pair lost 0.02% to 7.1088.

The GBP/USD pair slid % to 1.1615, with the number of cases exceeding 8,000 as of March 25. Concerns are rising that the U.K. is inadequately prepared for the spike in cases, despite Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s stricter new regulations released earlier this week.