The greenback fell and the Mexican peso rallied 1.7 percent against the dollar during the swearing in of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.
The dollar oscillated during the 16-minute speech but ended lower. Traders had been hoping for more clarity on his tax reform and fiscal spending plans but instead Trump reiterated his promises to build new infrastructure and bring back jobs to the U.S.
Since Trump was elected President in November the dollar has soared to 14-year highs however, the rally appears to have lost steam after comments from Trump stating that he would prefer a weaker dollar.
The Australian dollar edged higher on Friday thanks to the weakness of the greenback with the AUD hitting a high of 0.7563 before settling above 0.7500. Meanwhile the Pound managed to hold onto gains closing at 1.2368 despite Retail Sales numbers for Decemebr out of the UK, showing the biggest fall in four years.
The dollar was also mixed against other emerging currencies falling 1.5 percent against the Turkish Lira but rising 0.2 percent against the South African Rand.
In energy, WTI rose 2.71% or $1.39 to $52.76 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent, the global benchmark, rose 2.81% or $1.52 to $55.68 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe.
According to OPEC officials, OPEC and non-OPEC producers have already cut 1.5 million barrels a day out of the global oil market—over 80% of the amount pledged.
The officials said the estimates were preliminary, however, and the final, end-of-month average numbers could be different.
The 1.5 million barrels a day in cuts does not account for OPEC members that are exempted from the agreement to cut production, including Libya, Iran and Nigeria. In fact Libyan production has risen significantly since November when the OPEC production deal was struck, rising above 700,000 barrels a day in January for the first time in three years, Libyan National Oil Co. officials said. That is up almost a third since October, the month most other OPEC members used as a baseline for their production cuts.
In equities, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose in early trade, pared gains during Mr. Trump’s speech and rallied to end up nearly 100 points snapping a five-day losing streak and putting its year-to-date gains at 0.3% to 19827.25. The S&P 500 was up 0.34% to 2271.31 while the Nasdaq Composite was up 0.28% to 5555.33.
