Asian currencies rose, with India’s rupee posting its best week in more than a decade, as global investors piled into emerging-market equities and the dollar slumped on concern the US will lose its top credit rating.
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, which tracks the 10 most-active regional currencies against the greenback, climbed to the highest level in more than four months on Friday.
The rupee rose 4.9 percent this week to 47.125 per dollar in Mumbai, its biggest weekly advance since March 1996, after a resounding election victory by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress Party boosted optimism he will see through reforms unopposed that are beneficial to the economy. India’s SENSEX index of stocks rallied 14 percent, the biggest weekly gain since 1992.
TAIWAN DOLLAR
The New Taiwan dollar completed a fifth weekly gain as the country took further measures to boost relations and trade with China, helping draw funds to Taiwanese assets.
“Taiwan is a capital goods and technology exporter to China and will get some support that way,” said Patrick Bennett, a Hong Kong-based currency strategist at Societe Generale SA. “This expansion of economic cooperation between Taiwan and China is something new and very positive. It’ll be a long-term positive for portfolio flows.”
The NT dollar rose 0.8 percent this week to NT$32.679 and reached a five-month high of NT$32.585 on Friday.
The South Korean won gained a similar proportion to 1,247.67. The Asia Dollar Index climbed for a fifth day to close at the highest level since October.
Elsewhere, the Malaysian ringgit rose 2.3 percent this week to 3.4705 per US dollar, near a four-month high. Singapore’s dollar added 1.8 percent to S$1.4412 and the Indonesian rupiah climbed 1.9 percent to 10,239.
US DOLLAR
The US dollar dropped this week against all 16 of the world’s most-traded currencies. The yen climbed to a nine-week high against the greenback on Friday.
The US dollar slid 0.8 percent to US$1.3998 per euro at 4:16pm on Friday in New York, from US$1.3890 on Thursday, after reaching US$1.4051, the weakest level since Jan. 2. The yen declined 0.4 percent to ¥94.80 per dollar from ¥94.41, after touching ¥93.86, the strongest level since March 19. The yen lost 1.2 percent to ¥132.71 versus the euro from ¥131.15.
The Canadian dollar advanced as much as 1.6 percent on Friday to C$1.1189, the strongest since Oct. 9, while New Zealand’s currency climbed to US$0.6238, the highest level since Oct. 21. The Australian dollar reached US$0.7867, the highest level since Oct. 2.
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
‘SOMETHING SPECIAL’: Donald Trump vowed to reward his supporters, while President William Lai said he was confident the Taiwan-US partnership would continue Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the US early yesterday morning, an extraordinary comeback for a former president who was convicted of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts. With a win in Wisconsin, Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. As of press time last night, The Associated Press had Trump on 277 electoral college votes to 224 for US Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee, with Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan and Nevada yet to finalize results. He had 71,289,216 votes nationwide, or 51 percent, while Harris had 66,360,324 (47.5 percent). “We’ve been through so
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