Speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump will appoint a hawkish head of the Federal Reserve when current Chair Janet Yellen’s term expires kept the dollar steady on Tuesday morning. On Monday reports indicated that Trump is favoring Stanford economist John Taylor, a respected policy hawk who had previously been thought to be lower down on the list of candidates.
The dollar was unchanged against the yen as of 1:30 p.m. HK/SIN, but was up against several other trading partners including the Canadian and Australian dollars and the Swiss franc. The dollar was also up against the euro, trading at $1.1776.
Nevertheless, Shin Kadota, a senior analyst for Barclays in Tokyo, commented to Reuters that “News regarding the Fed chairmanship is in constant flux and the market finds it hard to move significantly in either direction until some clarity is established.”
Oil Prices Struggle
Oil prices stalled on Tuesday morning after a strong showing during Monday’s Asian session. U.S. WTI futures were down 0.15 percent to $51.79 per barrel, and Brent futures were down a modest 0.02 percent to $57.81 per barrel. On Tuesday, Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) confirmed that OPEC’s compliance with their production cuts stands at 86 percent, a higher rate than ever before. He did note that compliance constantly fluctuates, so there’s no way to know for sure if this high compliance rate will continue into November, but that if compliance remains steady, the markets may be rebalance in the coming months.
Birol also noted that it is too early to measure whether the continual political tensions between Iraq and Kurdistan and the potential for increased sanctions by the U.S. on Iran will have substantial impacts on oil prices.