Forexpros – The U.S. dollar gained ground against its major counterparts Monday after a mass euro zone credit and a European Financial Stability Fund downgrade by Standard & Poors combined with a weak French debt auction.
During late session U.S. trade, the greenback traded higher against the euro, with EUR/USD falling 0.10% to hit 1.2665.
Standard & Poor’s downgraded France to AA+ from AAA with a negative outlook on Friday.
The rating agency also slashed Cyprus, Portugal, Italy and Spain two levels. Long term credit ratings were also lowered on Austria, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia. However, Germany, Ireland, Finland, Belgium, Estonia, Netherlands, and Luxembourg had their rating affirmed by S&P.
S&P just announced a downgrade of AAA rating of the euro zones bailout fund, EFSF to AA+
The French sale of 51 week treasury bills met with weak investor demand.
However, French borrowing costs dropped as the country sold eur1.895 billion of one year notes at a yield of 0.406%, down from 0.454% on January 9th.
Witold Bahrke of PFA Pension A/S explained to Bloomberg, “Rating downgrades are always a bit of old news and everybody already anticipated the move from S&P, but a positive is that President Sarkozy will have less leverage against Chancellor Merkel who’s getting more room to push her agenda. We have seen a series of indicators showing macro economic conditions have improved.”
Greek officials will reconvene with creditors on January 18th after the talks stalled last week increasing default fears.
The dollar was down slightly against the pound with GBP/USD easing higher by 0.04% to 1.5324.
In the U.K., Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne stated that the euro zone needs to shoe it can stand behind the shared currency and resolve Greece’s debt crisis.
Elsewhere, the greenback was lower against the yen but higher against the Swiss franc with USD/JPY off by 0.26% to 76.76 and USD/CHF advancing 0.26% to hit 0.9546.
In addition the greenback was mixed against its Canadian, Australian and New Zealand cousins with USD/CAD dropping 0.5% to hit 1.0182, AUD/USD falling 0.13% to hit 1.0313 and NZD/USD slipping 0.03% to 0.7944.
The dollar index, which tracks the performance of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, gave back 0.08% to hit 81.66.
Investors are awaiting the German ZEW sentiment index and euro zone consumer price inflation figures on Tuesday.
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