Federal Reserve policymakers met last night and announced that interest rates will be kept on hold this time around. They did signal that rates will continue to be hiked gradually which investors took for confirmation that rates will be hiked in December. The dollar strengthened as a result.
The only other piece of economic data of note was initial jobless claims, which came in as expected at 214,000 up to 3 November 2018. This was down from an upwardly revised 215,000 the previous week. Some claims are a result of Hurricane Florence, so it will be interesting to see what level of improvement we see once the situation is resolved.
Today we will see the University of Michigan’s preliminary reading. It is expected to dip a little to 98.0 from 98.6 in the previous period.
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