The super dollar falls at the beginning of the week awaiting Powell and key data

He dollar American loses positions at the beginning of the trading day this Monday in Europe, awaiting the speech of the president of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell before the US Congress provokes investor caution at the beginning of the week.

The dollar index, which tracks the evolution of this currency with respect to a basket of six other main currencies, fell 0.1% to 104.403, after registering last week a weekly loss for the first time since January.

Recent remarks by the Federal Reserve’s policymakers pointed to more interest rate hikes to combat inflation, which is proving more persistent than expected.

This continued over the weekend; the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Mary Daly, stated that “to put this episode of high inflation behind us, more tightening of monetary policy will probably be necessary for a longer time.”

Richmond Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Barkin said Friday that he could see a scenario in which the central bank would raise benchmark rates to the 5.5-5.75% range, one percentage point per cent. above the current range.

Thus, The focus is on Powell, who will present the Fed’s semiannual monetary policy report to the Senate on Tuesday and to the House of Representatives on Wednesday. Traders fear that Powell will try to temper expectations of a potential rate hike later in the month.

The Fed slowed the pace of rate hikes to 25 basis points at its last meeting on February 1, after December’s 50 basis point hike that followed four consecutive 75 basis point hikes.

For its part, the EUR/USD pair rises 0.2% to the 1.0653 level, after rising 0.8% last week after the president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, indicated that the increases central bank interest rate they may have to continue beyond the 50 basis point rise forecast for March.