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The safe dollar

The US dollar often rises when bond yields fall, because it, like bonds, is a relatively safe asset
September 12, 2019

The US dollar has risen. The Bank for International Settlements estimates that it is now close to a 17-year high against a broad basket of currencies. It is no accident that this has happened at the same time as bond yields across the west have hit new lows.

I say this because there has for years been a tendency for the dollar to rise when government bond yields fall. We saw this in the late 1990s, 2008 and 2013-16. Conversely, rising yields in 2003-07 and in 2017-18 were accompanied by a weaker dollar.

Since 1994 there has been a correlation of minus 0.4 between annual changes in the dollar’s trade-weighted index and in 10-year gilt yields (which I use in this case as a proxy for bond yields generally). This is high, considering how volatile exchange rates are.

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