Market Bizzz

The moves were small, yet showed traders’ faith the dollar has further to fall. The yuan touched a one-month high at 7.1604 to the dollar in offshore trade. Sterling and Swiss franc were testing overnight highs. U.S. core inflation came in at 0.2% in June against market expectations for 0.3%. Headline annual CPI fell to 3% and has been dropping since hitting a peak at 9.6% a year earlier.

Making gold cheaper for holders of other currencies, the dollar index fell 0.2% to its lowest level since May 11. Benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury yields also slipped to their lowest in nearly a week. * While a few Fed members said on Monday the central bank was close to ending its monetary policy tightening, Fed Bank of New York President John Williams reiterated that the central bank was not done raising its short-term rate target on Tuesday.

If confirmed in data from the Energy Information Administration later on Wednesday, it would be the first crude stock build in four weeks and compares with an increase of 3.3 million barrels in the same week last year and a five-year average decrease of 6.9 million barrels.

U.S. consumer price data is due on Wednesday, while a producer prices report is due on Thursday. Several Fed officials said this week the central bank would likely need to raise rates further to curb inflation but that the end of its tightening cycle was getting close.

Standard Chartered said the rationale for its predicted price rise was that miners who mint the 900 new bitcoins produced each day around the world would soon need to sell fewer to cover their costs – mostly electricity to power super-computers.

The Nasdaq 100 includes 100 of the largest companies that trade on the Nasdaq exchange, and changes to the index will force investment funds that track it to adjust their portfolios and sell shares of companies that have their weight in the index reduced.