Singapore dollar virtually unchanged at $1.2658

A lacklustre session saw equities, commodities and foreign exchange do very little, says IG Markets Singapore.

IG Markets Singapore said:

The Singapore dollar saw little action last night with the US closed for Independence Day celebrations.
It was virtually unchanged at $1.2658.

Markets were relatively quiet last night on all fronts with trading volumes thin.

A lacklustre session saw equities, commodities and foreign exchange do very little.

Traders sat on the sidelines while assessing their next move with two key events looming.

Tonight we have an ECB decision on Eurozone interest rates while non-farm payrolls data is released on Friday night.

BK Asset Management meanwhile noted:

The first monetary policy announcement on Thursday will come from the Bank of England. After voting 5-4 to keep asset purchases unchanged, we are looking for the BoE to increase their asset purchase program by GBP50 billion to GBP375 billion.

Both the U.K. and Eurozone economies have suffered a further pullback in growth since the last central bank meeting but U.K. policymakers were much closer to easing in June than ECB officials.

However like many central banks around the world, a large part of their concern was caused by the uncertainty in Eurozone but the banking union announced by EU Leaders last week neutralized a lot of the risk in the market, reducing the pressure on the BoE to ease.

We still believe that the monetary policy committee will increase asset purchases and given that we share the consensus view, the greater risk for the British pound would be if the central bank left the size of their Quantitative Easing Program unchanged.