Dollar Gains Big This Week as World Stock Markets End the Quarter on a High Note

World stock markets rose on the last trading day this Friday as the dollar gained strongly, marking its best week since December.

A comprehensive report released on Friday showed that the consumer spending scale in U.S hardly rose in August.

More data showed that the Chicago Purchasing Management Index, which measures the level of factory activity, improved more than anticipated in September. Even so, the prospects that the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates still remain.

The recent tax cut plan by U.S President, Donald Trump, together with the anticipated increase in interest rates by the end of the year have been alleged in the markets for the entire week and investors are already hands on, evaluating the chances of the fiscal changes taking place.

In related news, Wall Street celebrated the green Friday with a rally in the tech stocks as S&P and NASDAQ hit all-time record highs, marking a major gain as the third quarter came to an end with lingering hopes of a tax reform.

The S&P ended at 2,519.36, indicating a gain of 9.3 points while the NASDAQ gained 42.51 points, ending the day at 6,495.96. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 23.89 points, to 22,405.09.

“The economic data we got was either on target or it was slightly better than expected, so there wasn’t anything negative at all to put a pause on things,” Randy Frederick, Vice President of trading & derivatives at Charles Schwab in Texas, told Reuters.

“It really sums up kind of what we saw all month and all quarter – another calm day,” Ryan Detrick, Senior Marketing Strategist at LPL Financial in North Carolina, told Reuters.

“This is one of the least volatile Septembers in history. It’s kind of a continuation of that real dull trading with a nice upward bias.”
Major indexes across the globe have been posting solid gains all year.

The European stock markets gained, with the Pan-European FTS Euro first 300 index .FTEU3 rising by 0.44 percent and marking its highest gain this year. The MSCI’s gauge of global stocks index .MIWD00000PUS rose by 0.45 percent, marking its 11th successive rise.

“The pattern that has been working, easy money but relatively slow economic growth that keeps the tightening from becoming too tight, continues to augur for a decent outlook for equities in particular,” the Chief Investment Strategist at Key Private Bank, Bruce McCain, told Reuters.

The U.S dollar maintained a 1 percent gain throughout the week as the dollar index .DXY, which is used to gauge the Federal Reserve note against many currencies, saw a drop of 0.01 percent.

The EUR= was up by 0.26 percent for the entire week. US10YT=RR dropped in price, yielding 2.3354 percent while Spot gold XAU= fell by 0.5 percent yielding $1,208.15 per ounce. Brent LCOcv1 came last with a 0.84 percent drop to $56.68.

“Economically, the situation in the U.S merits the fact that the dollar has gained, “Juan Perez, Currency Strategist at Temptus Inc., told Reuters.

The U.S Treasury also ended the rough third quarter with a positive gain for most of its yields