Dollar gains intact as China disappoints, traders eye Jackson Hole

US dollar rate index news: The dollar began on a firm footing on Monday, following five straight weeks of gains, as investors looked ahead to the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole symposium for a guide on where rates might settle when the dust of this hiking cycle clears. The dollar gained 0.7 per cent on the euro last week, inched ahead on the yen and surged by more than 1 per cent on the Antipodean currencies as U.S. Treasury yields leapt in anticipation of interest rates staying higher for longer.

In early trade, the Australian dollar, at $0.6402, and the New Zealand dollar at $0.5913 were slightly lower and uncomfortably close to last week's nine-month lows after a rate cut in China disappointed market expectations. China cut its one-year benchmark lending rate by 10 basis points and left its five-year rate unchanged, against economists' expectations for 15 bp cuts to both.

The yuan slid to the weak side of 7.3 per dollar despite a firm fixing of its trading range by the central bank. It last traded at 7.3011, though so far keeping off last week's lows beyond 7.31, as that had brought state banks into spot markets in London and New York hours as buyers. The Antipodean currencies often function as a liquid proxy for the yuan owing to the region's exports to China.

"The Australian dollar will continue to underperform this week in our view," said strategists at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in a note to clients.

"We consider there is a growing risk that the Aussie dips below $0.60 before year-end. It will likely take a big Chinese stimulus package focused on commodity-intensive infrastructure spending to turn around the downtrend."

Like the yuan, the yen is also on intervention watch, having fallen to levels around which authorities stepped in last year. It was steady at 145.19 per dollar in early trade.

The euro held at $1.0871. Sterling hovered at $1.2738. The Swiss franc was just above a six-week low made last week at 0.8817 per dollar.

Apart from waiting for news of stimulus in China, the upcoming Jackson Hole symposium - where Fed chair Jerome Powell is due to speak on Friday - is the markets' primary focus and may set the direction for U.S. yields.

Ten-year yields rose 14 basis points for the week and touched a 10-month high of 4.328 per cent, within a whisker of a 15-year high. Thirty-year yields rose nearly 11 bps to their highest in more than a decade.

This year's theme for the annual gathering in Wyoming is "structural shifts in the global economy".

"Two things that may come across are: decades of ultra-low rates backed by ultra-low inflation may be over," said Vishnu Varathan, head of economics and strategy at Mizuho Bank in Singapore.

"And global policy-makers may prefer to maintain restrictive real rates for a while, thereby keeping risks from volatile inflation alive."

Bitcoin, which was battered to a two-month low last week as rising U.S. yields and China's slowing economy drove a wave of selling, nursed those losses at $26,129.