Currencies Round up (Monday, November 2, 2009,)

FX round-up: Dollar firms as Wall St retreats

The dollar firmed against major currencies on Friday as stocks on Wall Street retreated sharply following Thursday’s rally.

Disappointing US consumer confidence data unnerved traders although manufacturing figures came in better than expected. Personal income came in flat, again as expected, although savings rose to an annual rate of $355.6bn. The mixed economic picture, along with a sell-off among financial stocks, was enough to boost the dollar’s safe haven qualities.

As Thursday’s euphoria over the US GDP figures wore off, attention turned to analysts predictions of as much as a 15% correction off Wall Street’s leading index, following the summer’s tremendous rally.

The dollar index, which measures the US currency against a basket of six others, rose 0.6% to 76.400.

The euro fell to $1.4729 from $1.4828 the previous session. The dollar fell over 1% against the Japanese yen to 89.99 yen after the Bank of Japan said it would stop buying Japanese corporate bonds.

GBP	AUD	CAD	JPY	EUR	CHF	USD
GBP	1.0000	1.8184	1.7749	148.2841	1.1151	1.6837	1.6460
AUD	0.5499	1.0000	0.9761	81.5479	0.6132	0.9260	0.9052
CAD	0.5634	1.0245	1.0000	83.5444	0.6282	0.9486	0.9273
JPY	0.0067	0.0123	0.0120	1.0000	0.0075	0.0114	0.0111
EUR	0.8968	1.6307	1.5918	132.9840	1.0000	1.5100	1.4761
CHF	0.5939	1.0800	1.0542	88.0688	0.6623	1.0000	0.9776
USD	0.6076	1.1047	1.0783	90.0900	0.6774	1.0230	1.0000