Singapore dollar hits weakest in more than seven years
1 Hour Ago
CNBC.com
The Singapore dollar tumbled to its weakest since 2009, during the global financial crisis, and it may have further to go.
The U.S. dollar was fetching as much as 1.4506 Singapore dollars on Tuesday afternoon local time, according to Reuters data, climbing from as low as S$1.4428 earlier in the session. That's the weakest for the city-state's currency, also known as the Sing, since August of 2009.
But the Sing snapped back later in Tuesday's session to around 1.4450 against the dollar, with Reuters reporting that the central bank was suspected of intervening to support the currency. The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) didn't immediately return an emailed request for comment sent on Tuesday. On Wednesday, at 7:48 a.m. HK/SIN, the greenback was fetching 1.4442 Singapore dollars.
The weakness came as the dollar has surged against regional currencies in the wake of Donald Trump's surprise election win in the U.S. and as the U.S. Federal Reserve surprised markets at its meeting last week by indicating it would likely hike rates three times next year, a faster rate of tightening than the widely expected two times.
Analysts expected that the Singapore dollar could fall even further, but it didn't appear likely to test its Asian financial crisis lows, like the currency of its Northern neighbour, Malaysia. The ringgit has fallen to its lowest level since 1998 as dollar bullishness and domestic economic weaknesses weighed.
But the dollar/Sing pair still has quite a way to go before it hits its highs of even the global financial crisis, when it climbed as high as around 1.5562 in late 2009; it touched levels above 1.85 in 2001, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York.
Like Malaysia, Singapore's domestic economy also faces a rocky outlook, analysts have noted.
