The British currency rallied on Friday in Asia on expectations that voters in
Scotland narrowly decided to stay part of the United Kingdom. The results are not final though.
GBP/USD traded at 1.6432, up 0.21%, well after polls closed and counting continued apace.
In Asia, a light data day lay ahead with AUD/USD traded at 0.8984, up 0.05%.
USD/JPY edged to 108.76, up 0.06%.
The greenback traded mixed overnight to lower against most major currencies, incentivised by expectations for tighter monetary policy on the horizon and softened by a mixed bag of U.S. data.
In a report, the U.S. Department of
Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits
in the week ending Sept. 13 fell by 36,000 to 280,000, the lowest level
since mid-July, from the previous week’s revised total of 316,000.
Analysts had expected jobless claims to fall by 11,000 to 305,000 last week.
Separately,
the U.S. Commerce Department said that the number of building permits
issued last month dropped by 5.6% to 998,000 units from July’s total of
1.057 million.
Analysts expected building permits to fall by 0.4% to 1.045 million units in August.
The
report also showed that U.S. housing starts tumbled by 14.4% last month
to hit 956,000 units from July’s total of 1.117 million units,
confounding expectations for an increase to 1.040 million.
