* Graphic: World FX rates in 2019 http://tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh
By Saikat Chatterjee
LONDON, Dec 4 (Reuters) - The dollar traded near one-month
lows on Wednesday as markets remained jittery about the progress
of Sino-U.S. trade talks and waited for U.S. data that could
show whether the prolonged trade spat is starting to damage
consumption in the United States.
A Bloomberg report that the two sides were close to agreeing
on the amount of tariffs that would be rolled back in a
phase-one trade deal boosted the offshore-Chinese yuan by 0.2%
to 7.05 It had languished around seven-week lows to the dollar after
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday a trade agreement
may be delayed until after November 2020 U.S. elections.
But the report failed to significantly budge the greenback.
Against a basket of its rivals .DXY , it traded at 97.753,
above Tuesday's trough of 97.644, its lowest since Nov. 11.
"We have been down this road before on the trade agreement
headline front so markets will take these headlines with a pinch
of salt and investors are focusing on the U.S. data," said
Manuel Oliveri, a FX strategist at Credit Agricole in London.
U.S. non-manufacturing ISM data is the highlight for
currency traders to gauge whether the weak manufacturing ISM
print earlier this week will spill over into the services sector
ahead of the important monthly U.S. jobs data later this week.
HIGHEST INTEREST RATES
The greenback declined nearly 1% in the first two trading
days this week as decent eurozone data and surprisingly strong
China survey figures raised hopes that the global economy will
pick up traction next year and boost demand for non-U.S.
currencies.
U.S. President Donald Trump's statement that he had "no
deadline" for an agreement with China hurt sentiment and boosted
demand for the greenback as investors added long positions on a
currency whose interest rates remained higher than most of its
developed market rivals.
Investors are flocking to the currency which offers the
highest interest rate and that is the dollar," said Morten Lund,
a senior FX strategist at Nordea.
Money markets are pricing in a quarter point rate cut by the
U.S. central bank until July next year. Even if that
materialises, U.S. interest rates will remain more than 100 bps
higher than the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan.
The Australian dollar was the biggest loser against the
dollar AUD=D3 , falling 0.5% versus the greenback after some
disappointing third quarter growth data and retracing a
cumulative gain of 1.5% in the last two sessions. AUD/
The pound was the only currency to buck the broader market
trend, gaining a third of a percentage point against the dollar
and the euro, before an election next week. GBP/
Elsewhere, the yen JPY=EBS stood at 108.60 yen versus the
dollar on Wednesday, close to its strongest since Nov. 22.
The Swiss franc CHF=EBS was quoted at 0.9875 versus the
dollar, near its highest level since Nov. 4.
Both the Japanese and Swiss currencies tend to be bought as
safe-havens during times of uncertainty.