US Dollar soars as Omicron jitters jump amid rate-hike talks

US Dollar soars as Omicron jitters jump amid rate-hike talks

On Friday, the US Dollar Index (DXY) measured against a basket of six major currencies on an average jumped as much as 0.7 per cent amid a wide-spread risk-aversion trend among the investors, as major Central Banks across the globe including the US Federal Reserve had been engaged in talks of potential rate-hikes in a bid to calm down a torrential build-up in price pressures, while concerns over a rapidly spreading Omicron variant had prompted market participants to ditch out riskier assets.

Aside from that, following Friday’s gains, the US Dollar Index had pared all of the losses it had incurred since last December 14-15 US Fed policy meet. In point of fact, on Wednesday, the US Federal Reserve had told in a statement followed by its two-day long December policy meet that the US Central Bank would double up the rate of its bond taper with aims to conclude the program by March 2022, which eventually had signalled at least three rate hikes each in 2022 and 2023.







On top of that, Fed Chair Powell was quoted saying that the economy was closing in on a maximum employment, which in effect