Peso climbs to fresh peak vs dollar

THE PESO climbed further to hit a fresh nine-month high versus the dollar on Thursday amid continued optimism on the trade negotiations between the United States and China.

The local unit closed Thursday’s session at P51.70 versus the greenback, 21 centavos stronger than the P51.91-per-dollar finish on Wednesday.

The peso’s close was a new high for the local unit in more than nine months or since it closed at P51.675 on May 4, 2018.

The peso traded stronger the whole day, opening the session at P51.82 per dollar. It hit an intraday trough of P51.85 versus the greenback.

Dollars traded surged to $1.45 billion from the $1.147 billion that switched hands the previous day.

A foreign exchange trader said the peso traded stronger yesterday as it broke the support level of P51.80 in the morning session.

“Overnight, the dollar traded weak still due to optimism in the US-China trade talks. There’s a strong view on the emerging markets,”the trader said in a phone interview.

The US Trade Representative’s office said on Wednesday that it will formally suspend the scheduled tariff increase on Chinese goods until “further notice” after US President Donald J. Trump decided to delay the March 1 deadline.

The trader added that the peace negotiations between the United States and North Korea did not affect the movement of the peso.

Meanwhile, another trader attributed the strengthening of the local unit to profit-taking ahead of data on US fourth-quarter gross domestic product growth.

“The report is expected to be weak following the huge losses in global markets as well as imminent threat of a US government shutdown in the latter part of 2018,” the other trader said in an e-mail.

For today, the first trader expects the peso to move between P51.55 and P52.10 versus the dollar, while the other gave a narrower P51.50-P51.80 range. —