After hitting its strongest against the dollar in seven months, the shekel is weakening against the US currency today but is strengthening against the euro. In afternoon inter-bank trading, the shekel is up 0.15% against the dollar at $3.226/$ and down 0.20% against the euro at NIS 3.781/€.
Yesterday, the Bank of Israel set the representative shekel-dollar rate up 0.124% from Friday, at NIS 3.221/$, and the representative shekel-euro rate was set 0.400% lower, at NIS 3.788.
The shekel is trading at the strongest for 18 months against the euro as Europe struggles to contain the Delta variant. In June and July the shekel-euro rate rose above NIS 4/€ but since then it has lost 6% of its value against the Israeli currency.
The EU awaits the next meeting of the European Central Bank on September 9 when it will decide on how to proceed regarding fiscal support and monetary policy.
The euro (and the shekel) has been weakening in the past few days against the dollar following positive US employment data last Friday and expectations that the US Senate will pass the $1 trillion infrastructures package in a bipartisan vote.
The shekel has been strengthening over the past month due to reduced purchases of foreign currency by the Bank of Israel, which bought only $500 million in foreign currency in July, the lowest amount since September 2020. The Bank of Israel bought $25 billion in foreign currency in the first six months of 2021 to moderate the strengthening of the shekel.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 10, 2021
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