THE dollar witnessed a sell-off mid-week after the Fed turned rather dovish during its FOMC meeting — tweaking its dot plot projection to zero hike for 2019 from two hikes back in December 2018, signalling the end of quantitative tightening (QT).
The Fed also altered its official projection for major economic data in 2019 — GDP slashed to 2.1% (prevous: 2.3%); PCE (Fed’s preferred inflation gauge) revised downwardly to 1.8% from 1.9%; and unemployment rate revised to 3.7% from the earlier projection of 3.5%. However, the dollar pared losses by the end of the week owing to Brexit-related noises as well as the upbeat economic figures released this week such as initial jobless claims which edged down to 221,000 from 230,000 a week earlier; and the Philadelphia Fed manufacturing index in March rising to 13.7 from -4.1 the previous month (consensus: +4.5).
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