Friday, 28th June 2013 | In today’s foreign exchange trading, authorised dealers bought much more foreign exchange than they sold, an unusual occurrence for a Friday. This seems to have signalled to Bank of Jamaica that speculation could be re-entering the market. As such, the BOJ initiated a pre-emptive strike in an after hours move in which they announced two Certificates of Deposit instruments to mop up Jamaican dollar liquidity and pry foreign currency into the NIR in the coming week.
The total amount of currency purchased on Friday amounted to US$32.2 million and selling US$24.5 million. While the actual selling of US dollars was nearly $6 million less than purchases, the selling rate inched down by just 1 cent and the buying rate by 11 cents. There was more buying of Pound Sterling and the Canadian dollars than the amounts sold to end users.
The average selling rate for Canadian dollar gained 4 cents and for the buying rate, 9 cents. The rate for the Pound fell all of $1.18 for the buying rate to close at $152.75 and was down only 6 cents on the selling rate.
Traders dropped the minimum selling rate for three currencies between 5 cent and $1.94, while the highest selling rate hardly changed. The highest buying rate for the US dollar moved up 20 cents but for the Canadian dollar it fell by 20 cents and the pound was also off 50 cents.
