Dollar hits 2025 low, Middle East tensions fuel risk-off mood
LONDON: The US dollar hit a new 2025 low on Thursday, while stocks eased from record highs, as a cocktail of rising Middle East tensions and concern over the fragility of a trade truce between Washington and Beijing drew investors into safe-haven assets.
Separately, a report on US consumer inflation on Wednesday showed overall price pressures remained contained in May, largely due to declines in the cost of gasoline, cars and housing.
But most economists expect inflation to pick up as the impact of US tariffs begins to bite.
The dollar, which has lost around 10 per cent in value against a basket of currencies this year, fell to its lowest since April 2022 in European trading.
Global stocks took a breather from the almost-unbroken rally that has run since early April, leaving the MSCI All-Country World Index flat, just below Wednesday's all-time high.
In Europe, the STOXX 600 fell 0.8 per cent, led mostly by airlines, given brewing tensions in the Middle East and a deadly crash of an Air India flight bound for London that killed at least 30 people near the Indian city of Ahmedabad.
Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell 0.5–0.6 per cent. The US administration on Wednesday said US personnel were being moved out of the Middle East due to heightened security risks in the region, which briefly drove oil prices up by four per cent before they receded.
"(A flare-up in tensions) is a significant tail risk, but I don't think it is anybody's baseline forecasts. So it's something to watch — if there is a real escalation there, then markets will take fright and that would have ramifications for the oil price," Daiwa Capital economist Chris Scicluna said.
Iran, for its part, said it will not abandon its right to uranium enrichment, a senior Iranian official told Reuters on Thursday, adding that a "friendly" regional country had alerted Tehran over a potential military strike by Israel.
Classic safe-haven assets got a lift. The Swiss franc and the Japanese yen strengthened, pushing the dollar down by one per cent against the franc and down 0.7 per cent against the yen, while gold rose nearly one per cent to US$3,385 an ounce.
The sense of relief stemming from a positive conclusion to US-China trade talks earlier this week, which President Donald Trump said was a "great deal with China", evaporated by Thursday.
RED, WHITE AND BLUE LETTERS
Adding yet another dose of uncertainty in the markets, Trump said the US would send out letters in one to two weeks outlining the terms of trade deals to dozens of other countries, which they could embrace or reject.
"Markets may have no choice but to respond to Trump's tariff threat — even if it's just posturing to bring others to the table. The gap between 'risk-on' positioning and real-world risks has stretched too far," said Charu Chanana, chief investment strategist at Saxobank.
Trump's erratic tariff policies have roiled global markets this year, prompting hordes of investors to exit US assets, especially the dollar, as they worried about rising prices and slowing economic growth.
The euro rose by as much as 1.07 per cent to US$1.16, its highest since October 2021.
US Treasuries also rallied in price, pushing yields down 3.5 basis points to below 4.38 per cent, while two-year yields, which are more sensitive to inflation and interest-rate expectations, eased 2.7 bps to 3.92 per cent.
Later in the day, the focus will be on a producer inflation report as some of the components feed into the Fed's preferred inflation gauge — the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index.
Wednesday's consumer inflation index kept alive the prospect of the Federal Reserve cutting rates by a quarter point, but only in September, as policymakers assess how tariffs work their way through the real economy.
"I suspect it's probably going to be a combination of the two. Therefore it makes sense for the Fed to wait and see what happens rather than rushing into a rate cut," AMP Capital's head of investment strategy and chief economist Shane Oliver said.
Oil, which has fallen by 20 per cent in the last year, eased by 1.6 per cent to US$68.63 a barrel, but was still pinned near two-month highs, adding another moving part to the outlook for interest rates.
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