The shekel strengthened against the dollar and euro in early afternoon inter-bank trading today. The shekel-dollar exchange rate fell 0.59% to NIS 3.399/$, and the shekel-euro exchange rate fell 0.14% to NIS 4.923/€. The Bank of Israel then purchase $150 million to push the exchange rate back above NIS 3.40/$ only temporarily but then the shekel continued to strengthen.
In international markets, the dollar is traded against the euro at $1.436/€.
Mizrahi Tefahot Bank strategy and investments department manager Ronen Menachem said that the decline in all the components of the US Purchasing Managers Index for May, and new orders - the most important item - fell 10.7% close to the threshold indicating economic contraction. He said that this was the most worrying message of the index, along with the volatility in the inventory item.
Furthermore, Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP) employment data showed only 38,000 new private sector jobs were created in May in the US, only a fraction of the 175,000 analysts had expected.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 2, 2011
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011