Dollar holds ahead of Fed meeting

The US dollar held steady against most major currencies today, as markets are anticipating new updates and developments on the US-China trade file, in addition to anticipation for the US Federal Reserve meeting later this week.

Chinese trade officials stressed that contacts between the US and China are continuing to bring views closer and pave the way for signing the phase one of the trade deal.

Dollar was buoyed last week by the US jobs report, after it revealed that the economy has added 266K new jobs in November, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% (50-year low).

The US Federal Reserve will launch it meeting tomorrow and will continue until Wednesday, with most forecasts are for the bank to hold interest rates at 1.7% unchanged.

Fed Governor, Jerome Powell, and his colleagues hinted earlier that the Fed will hold the US monetary policy in the near-term to assess the three rate cuts of this year.

The dollar index held against a basket of major currencies at 97.6 points as of 19:42 GMT, and hit an intraday high of 97.7 and a low of 97.5.