Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a group of major emerging economies known as BRICS, back the idea of developing a common payment system, a Russian official said. Russia and its BRICS peers have been looking for ways to decrease their dependence on the U.S. dollar and have advocated using their national currencies in mutual trade. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), said “increasing non-market risks of the global payment infrastructure” was behind the plan to integrate the group’s national payment systems. “An efficient ...

The dollar was lower on Friday afternoon as some optimism for the ongoing trade talks with China buoyed trade-linked currencies like the euro and the British pound. U.S.-China negotiations continued on Friday as both sides sought to hammer out a “phase one” trade pact. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said progress was being made on the agreement’s details, which helped lift trade-exposed currencies at the expense of safe-haven assets such as the Japanese yen. Ross, in an interview on Fox Business Network, said there was a very high probability the ...

The European Union is planning to extend access to London-based clearing houses for EU clients beyond next March to give the financial industry more time to prepare for Brexit, the bloc’s finance commissioner said on Friday. A temporary EU permission, known as equivalence, that treats Britain-based clearing houses, like London Stock Exchange’s derivatives central counterpart, as EU firms even after Brexit is due to expire on March 30, raising the prospect of EU customers having to shift positions from London at considerable cost. “I intend to propose to renew this ...

From the dominant reserve currency for central banks to the main conduit for global trade and borrowing, U.S. dollars are the lifeblood for banks and markets around the world. A Fed research paper estimated in 2017 that as much as 70% of all dollars are held outside the United States and 60% of all $100 bills circulated overseas. Another Fed paper this year said roughly half the 1.6 trillion of dollar banknotes in circulation were outside the United States. Markets got a reminder of the greenback’s hegemony in September when ...

Optimism that the United States and China may soon end their trade war after White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow said a deal was “getting close” lifted trade-exposed currencies on Friday at the expense of safe-haven assets such as the yen. Given the lack of concrete detail in Kudlow’s comments, however, markets stayed mostly cautious. “To be blunt, such rhetoric is more or less the same as Steven Mnuchin (who) said months ago that a deal was “99% done”,” Commerzbank analysts wrote in a note to clients, though they acknowledged ...

The Canadian dollar was little changed against its U.S. counterpart on Thursday, holding near an earlier one-month low as a speech by Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz loomed and investors grew more nervous about a global economic slowdown. World stocks fell as Chinese economic data slowed in October and Germany only narrowly avoided a recession in the third quarter, adding to worries about the global growth fallout from the U.S.-China trade war. Canada is a major exporter of commodities, including oil, so its economy could be hurt by a ...

As dollars dry up, global finance is growing increasingly dependent on opaque currency trading to keep cash flowing. Banks and other short-term dollar borrowers are becoming ever more reliant on the $3.2 trillion-a-day foreign exchange swap market, data shows, leaving them dangerously exposed should U.S. lenders stop feeding the system, even if only temporarily. Swaps users had a scare in September, when the U.S. Federal Reserve had to pump cash into markets as rates in the $2.2 trillion (£1.7 trillion) U.S. “repo” market spiked and spilled into FX swap markets, ...

The U.S. dollar fell against the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc, traditional safe-haven investments, after media reports that trade talks between the U.S. and China had “hit a snag” over farm purchases. The negotiations stalled as China expressed it did not want a deal that looked one-sided in the favor of the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Investors pulled out of riskier assets, sending the three major U.S. stock indexes lower, and pushing up safe-haven assets like the Japanese ...

China’s central bank said on Wednesday it had not issued any digital currencies nor authorised any asset trading platforms to trade such currencies, denying rumours about the issuance of such currencies. The central bank is still studying and testing its own digital currency and a timetable circulated online for the roll-out of digital currency is not accurate, the People’s Bank of China said in a statement on its website. Source: Reuters (Reporting by Lusha Zhang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

The dollar was little changed after U.S. President Donald Trump in a speech on Tuesday offered no new details on the state of the administration’s trade war with China. The dollar index .DXY held onto modest gains made earlier on Tuesday, but was last trading at 98.310 against a basket of six currencies, up 0.11% on the day, and a hair above 98.304, its level at noon when Trump’s remarks began. Speaking at The Economic Club of New York, Trump instead took aim once again at the Federal Reserve, bemoaning ...

The dollar was stronger against the yen and Swiss franc on Tuesday as traders grew optimistic ahead of a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump, in which he is expected to delay a tariff decision on European carmakers by six months. Trump’s speech to the Economic Club of New York is expected to be market-moving as he is scheduled to discuss U.S. trade policy. Currency traders will be listening for hints about the Trump administration’s long-running trade war with China, and any progress towards the “phase one” trade deal. “The ...

The dollar was stronger against the yen and Swiss franc on Tuesday as traders grew optimistic ahead of a speech by U.S. President Donald Trump, during which he is expected to again postpone imposing tariffs on European Union autos. Trump’s speech to the Economic Club of New York is expected to be market-moving as he is scheduled to discuss U.S. trade policy. Currency traders will also be listening for hints about the Trump administration’s long-running trade war with China, and any progress towards the “phase one” trade deal. “The market ...

The U.S. dollar was broadly lower on Monday after President Donald Trump said over the weekend that trade talks with China were moving along “very nicely” but the United States would only make a deal with Beijing if it was right for America. Trump on Saturday told reporters that the talks had moved more slowly than he would have liked, but China wanted a deal more than he did. The president also said there had been incorrect reporting about U.S. willingness to lift tariffs on Chinese goods. Officials from China ...

The dollar’s persistent and confounding strength will continue well into next year, and even if a partial U.S.-China trade deal is signed it will at most knock the currency by 1-2% in the immediate aftermath, a Reuters poll found. Renewed hopes the world’s two largest economies were taking steps towards ending their 16-month trade war have pushed global stocks close to record peaks and Wall Street to all-time highs. That risk-on attitude has led the U.S. dollar index – which measures the greenback’s value against other major currencies – to ...

The euro held steady against the U.S. dollar on Monday after matching a four-week low earlier as the greenback maintained its gains on optimism that the United States and China would roll back tariffs that have hurt global growth. Officials from both countries said late last week that a rollback of some tit-for-tat tariffs had been agreed as part of a preliminary deal, that has still to be finalised, aimed at ending their trade war. Even though that was subsequently denied by U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday, he did ...