The dollar surged on Friday to hit a six-week high against a basket of currencies as a bout of resilient economic data out of the United States raised market expectations that more interest rate hikes were in the offing.
This left the rand at its weakest level in more than three months. On Friday morning, the currency was trading at R18.24/$. "The US economy, from recent data, shows that it's still healthy. It doesn't seem to be going into a recession any time soon," said Tina Teng, market analyst at CMC Markets.Thursday's reports followed data from earlier this week, which showed robust growth in US retail sales in January and signs of sticky inflation, stoking fears that the Federal Reserve would have to raise rates higher than previously expected.
Elsewhere, the Aussie slid 0.46% to $0.6848, languishing near Thursday's more than one-month low of $0.68405.A deep dive into the big business story of the week, as well as expert analysis of markets and trends.Against the Japanese yen, the dollar jumped to a new six-week peak of 134.69 and was eyeing a weekly gain of nearly 2.5%, its best week since last August.
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