A good day for the forint: the Hungarian currency is soaring
The forint continues its strengthening trend on the last day of the week, Portfolio.hu reports.
From 413 against the euro at the beginning of the week, the rate had fallen to 401 by Friday afternoon. The domestic currency is seen as an outperformer in the region. According to the portal, an important Hungarian development could be behind this, in addition to the generally positive sentiment on the external markets.
The Hungarian development is that the personnel composition of the Integrity Authority’s (Integritás Hatóság) leaders has triggered investor optimism about the chances of an agreement on EU funds. This caused the EUR/HUF to fall out of a weekly trading range (down around 405.5) and breaking an eight-month uptrend, opening the way for further forwards movement.
Then the US data came out, which brought a weakening of the dollar and a strengthening of risk appetite, which further boosted the forint, 24.hu writes. What happened was that the US labour market data was greeted by the market in a rather upbeat mood. This caused stock markets to rise further and the dollar to fall, from 0.977 to 0.987 against the euro.
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Source: Portfolio, 24.hu
Baloney. The forint is not soaring. It’s just moved from really horrible to plain horrible.