The dollar is bulking up
The US dollar index is up 0.5% at 96.21 as of 7:35 a.m. ET, around a two-month high.
The greenback's appreciation follows comments by Cleveland Fed president Loretta Mester, who said: "We have to be a little pre-emptive in making sure that we're moving the interest rate up so that we can keep the expansion sustained."
"We are sympathetic to her arguments, but we cannot follow her in claiming a rate hike is compelling in November," noted Marc Chandler, the global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.
He continued:
"In most circumstances, we could, but what is unusual about the November meeting is that it is a week before the national election. There is precedent to move rates in September and December of election years but not November. Given the power of this tradition, a violation would require near emergency like conditions. That is not the case."
As for the rest of the world, here's the scoreboard as of 7:41 a.m. ET.
- The British pound is down 0.7% at 1.2751 against the dollar - a new 31-year low. Sterling hit an intraday low of $1.2740 on Tuesday morning. That surpasses the post-referendum low of $1.2798 reached on the day after the vote, which was the lowest level seen since the mid-1980s.
- The Australian dollar is little changed at .7669 per dollar after the Reserve Bank of Australia kept rates unchanged at 1.50%, as expected.
- The Indian rupee is little changed at 66.465 per dollar after the Reserve Bank of India unexpectedly cut its repo rate by 25 basis points to 6.25% in the first meeting post-Raghuram Rajan.
- The Japanese yen is down by 0.8% at 102.48. Notably, as Chandler pointed out, the dollar has now appreciated against the yen for six straight days.
- The Russian ruble is down 0.4% at 62.5251 per dollar.