Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Bethel Finance: Shekel strengthens against dollar

Bethel Finance news:
The shekel is strengthening against the dollar, but weakening against the euro, in morning inter-bank trading today. The shekel-dollar exchange rate is down 0.70%, compared with yesterday's representative rate, at NIS 3.824/$, but the shekel-euro exchange rate is up 0.34% at NIS 4.894/€, snapping a losing streak.

In international markets, the dollar weakened against the euro. The dollar-euro exchange rate is trading at $1.27/€.

The euro is continuing to trade at low levels in the wake of the European debt crisis and the series of European credit rating cuts, especially that of France. Yesterday, S&P also cut the credit rating of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which could bring about a rise in the fund's borrowing costs, as well as in the interest rates on the loans the fund grants European debt-ridden countries such as Greece, or even Italy. The European bailout fund is expected to hold a bond issue today, and Spain and Greece will raise debt.

Asian markets rose sharply with increases of 2%, following the publication of Chinese growth data. China reported 8.9% growth in the fourth quarter of 2011, above market forecasts, which predicted growth of only 8.7%. However, this was China's slowest quarter of growth recently. The good news is that Chinese growth was not affected by the European debt crisis.

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