By Chuck Mikolajczak
NEW YORK, Nov 5 (Reuters) - The dollar index was roughly unchanged on Thursday, as oil prices rebounded following a sharp drop in the prior session and investors weighed the possibility of a slowdown in AI-related spending dampening economic growth.
Crude prices were up more than 3% after plummeting on Wednesday as the widespread losses suffered by the Republican Party in the elections earlier this week boosted expectations that the risk of a further escalation in the US-Israeli
war on Iran was diminished.
In addition, US stocks were sharply lower, weighed down by a tumble of more than 6% in the S&P 500 technology sector as concerns about the massive spending by AI-related companies resurfaced, along with the possibility of more regulations which could slow the buildout of infrastructure for the emerging technology.
Democrats vowed to use their resounding midterm victory to rein in President Donald Trump, setting up two years of possible deadlock in Washington.
STRONG JOBS DATA SUPPORTS FED HIKES
Investors were also awaiting Friday's key government payrolls report. Labor Department data on Thursday showed weekly initial jobless claims fell by 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 189,000, matching a 57-year low hit in July, and below the 196,000 estimate of economists polled by Reuters.
In other data, US worker productivity grew faster than expected in the third quarter, depressing labor costs and supporting views that the labor market was not a source of inflation.
"It's a little bit of oil rebounding... basically, data that came out this week has been strong enough to support the still-stable US job market, and that just helps with the narrative around Fed pricing.... back-to-back Fed hikes at the end of the year and start of the new year," said Kevin Ford, lead FX and macro strategist at Convera.
Ford said that while the market is adjusting to a slower longer-term growth outlook on expectations of a slowing in the AI buildout, in the short-term, the economy is still on stable enough footing for the Fed to continue with rate hikes and the markets are positioning for that ahead of the payrolls report.
Coming off its biggest daily percentage drop in three weeks, the dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, ticked up 0.02% to 101.49, with the euro up 0.02% at $1.1229.
Despite the political shift in the US and drop in crude prices, expectations for the Federal Reserve's interest rate path remained largely unchanged. Markets are pricing in a 66.1% chance of a rate increase of at least 25 basis points from the Fed at its December meeting, according to CME FedWatch, down from 79.9% a week ago.
Cleveland Federal Reserve President Beth Hammack said the US central bank has more work to do to get inflation down to its 2% target, as price pressures remain unacceptably high, while Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin said a gradual pace of rate increases "makes sense."
Rising public debt and the rapid expansion of non-bank finance could curb the European Central Bank's ability to set the appropriate monetary policy, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel said.
Meanwhile flag-waving protesters marched through French cities and public workers went on strike on Thursday, underscoring lingering concerns about France's fiscal trajectory.
BANK OF ENGLAND RAISES RATES
Sterling slipped 0.09% to $1.3457, having earlier risen to a more than seven-week high after the Bank of England raised interest rates for the first time in over three years on Thursday and warned that at least one more increase was likely if the US-Iran conflict continues.
The Japanese yen strengthened 0.46% against the greenback to 157.63 per dollar after minutes from the Bank of Japan's September meeting, when policymakers raised rates to a 31-year high of 1.25%, reinforced bets for further interest rate hikes.
The BOJ minutes showed some board members signaling a chance of faster-paced increases. The BOJ board also debated the neutral rate and market pricing of the BOJ's terminal rate, in a sign of its growing focus on how far the central bank could lift borrowing costs without cooling the economy too much.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note on Thursday that the Japanese currency is the best AI hedge, with the dollar falling against the yen on days the Nasdaq underperformed the S&P 500, with even bigger declines for the greenback on days when the underperformance was greater than 1%.
Separately, analysts at Barclays said the yen is becoming less sensitive to oil prices as it moves in tandem with global risk sentiment over the long run, "but has diverged notably to the weak side during periods of higher oil prices."
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; additional reporting by Stefano Rebaudo; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus, Peter Graff, Susan Fenton and Andrea Ricci )
