The U.S. dollar fell Wednesday after the consumer-price index for June showed the rate of inflation slowing to the lowest level since 2021.
The ICE U.S. Dollar Index
DXY,
a measure of the currency against a basket of six major rivals, fell to 100.58 on Wednesday, on pace for the lowest level since April 2022, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
“The dollar selling off across the board after today’s soft US inflation report intensified bets that the Federal Reserve’s rate hike cycle may soon be nearing an end,” Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at global financial services firm Ebury wrote in emailed comments.
Data released Wednesday showed that the U.S. consumer prices rose a modest 0.2% in June, while economists polled by The Wall Street Journal forecast a gain of 0.3%. The yearly rate of inflation decelerated to 3% from 4% in the prior month, the lowest since March 2021.
Fed fund futures traders are still pricing in an over 90% chance that the Fed will raise its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points in its meeting later this month, according to CME Fed Watch. They are pricing in a 21.9% likelihood that the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates for one more time after July. That is down from 32.4% a day ago.
The Fed’s policy rate currently sits in a range of 5%-5.25%, its highest since 2007.
Meanwhile, the dollar typically trades according to expectations for U.S. rates relative to the rest of the world. While the Fed is seen as closer to completing its most aggressive rate-hike campaign of the past four decades, policy makers in Europe and the U.K. are possibly set up to boost borrowing costs further.
This “draws capital away from the dollar towards currencies where rates are still expected to move higher,” said Stephen Kolano, managing director of investments at Massachusetts-based Integrated Partners.
Indeed, the euro advanced against the dollar, pushing the EUR/USD pair up by 1.1% to its highest level in more than a year. The British pound also gained versus the greenback, lifting the GBP/USD pair higher by 0.5% to the highest since April 2022 as of Wednesday afternoon.
U.S. stocks rose Wednesday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
up 0.5% and the S&P 500
SPX,
up 0.8%. The Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
gained 1.1%, according to FactSet data.