So-called “non-reportable” traders meantime held a larger net bearish position according to data gathered by US regulator the CFTC, with those smaller, often private individual traders holding their biggest balance of short over long contracts since records began 20 years ago.
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Though he added that the date of what would be the Fed’s first increase to its benchmark interest rate since 2006 isn’t preordained.
The Federal Reserve is concerned about low inflation and won’t move before it sees inflation returning to more normal levels, said Stanley Fischer, the vice chairman of the U.S. central bank, in a television interview Monday.
In a speech on Monday afternoon, Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said “I think the point of liftoff is close”, even if there’s no “foreordained date”. 21 late Friday.
Fed officials were sending out mixed signals. Additionally, the central bank will get another chance to look at the labor market figures before its next meeting in mid-September. Last week, his comments underpinned the U.S. Dollar after he said he supported a September rate hike.
“The problem is not with the part that’s unusual in the dual mandate, namely employment, that’s doing just fine”, Mr Fischer, 71, said.
Laura Rosner, US economist at BNP Paribas in New York, said Mr Fischer’s focus on inflation was surprising given that Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the Fed can tighten before price pressures actually reach their target.
Fischer also said the Fed’s “ultra-accommodative” policy over the past several years had worked.
Its negative interest rate is achieving the desired effect of weakening the Swiss franc, which remains “strongly overvalued”, Swiss National Bank Vice Chairman Fritz Zurbruegg said in an interview with Finanz und Wirtschaft.
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The dollar has traded in a relatively narrow range for the past month, and U.S. economic data has done little to change its trajectory. “If the rest of the works is slower, that’s not good for the U.S. economy”. Last month, researchers at the St. Louis branch of the Fed put together a heat map (pdf) that tracks how far the underlying CPI components are straying from their long-run averages.
