Reserve Meeting: Dollar and Wall Street

reserve meeting: The ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +0.39% a measure of the buck strength against a basket of six rival currencies, rose 0.4% to 97.37, its highest level since early March, according to Fact Set data, according to Market Watch. We haven't seen the dollar index this high since the market was projecting the Fed would hike rates, said Jameel Ahmad, chief market analyst at FXTM. Despite the dollar moves, Wall Street is currently pricing in a mere 2.4% probability that the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates at the conclusion of its policy meeting, according to the CME Group Fed Watch Tool, which tracks Fed-funds futures prices. Investors were also turning their focus to next week Federal Reserve meeting on monetary policy. The probability of a rate hike by end of year is a little below 50%. But the theme of monetary-policy divergence, which means that the Fed is on a monetary-tightening path while other central banks in Europe and Japan are implementing easing policies, continued to support the dollar, analysts said. Still, some traders also viewed gains in the greenback as a function of technical factors. An upbeat reading of U.S. manufacturing for July, which rose to its best level since October, helped to support the idea that a recent spate of better-than-expected reports may offer the Fed sufficient confidence to move before the end of the year. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.