Currencies Round up

FX round-up: Bernanke caution revives dollar

The dollar recovered against major currencies as traders gave a mixed response to Ben Bernanke’s assessment of the US economy.

While mostly dovish caution surrounding unemployment and the timing of an economic recovery spurred demand for the dollar’s safe haven qualities. The buck also rose against the pound but eased against the yen.

The dollar index, which measures the US currency against six others, rose to an intra-day high of 79.083 before easing back to 78.920.

Demand for the dollar has been weak in recent days as traders cheer better than expected results and while there were more strong results Tuesday, focus turned to the Fed’s cautious testimony on the state of the economy.

"I want to be clear we have a very long haul here," he said. "Unemployment will stay high for quite some time. It's not going to feel like a very strong economy." He added, “Financial conditions remain stressed, and many households and businesses are finding credit difficult to obtain.”

	GBP	AUD	CAD	JPY	EUR	CHF	USD
GBP	1.0000	2.0094	1.8127	153.5626	1.1545	1.7522	1.6398
AUD	0.4977	1.0000	0.9021	76.4209	0.5745	0.8720	0.8160
CAD	0.5517	1.1085	1.0000	84.7129	0.6369	0.9666	0.9046
JPY	0.0065	0.0131	0.0118	1.0000	0.0075	0.0114	0.0107
EUR	0.8662	1.7406	1.5702	133.0161	1.0000	1.5178	1.4204
CHF	0.5707	1.1468	1.0345	87.6380	0.6589	1.0000	0.9358
USD	0.6098	1.2254	1.1055	93.6500	0.7040	1.0686	1.0000