During today’s trading, the main currency pairs are showing slight changes. This also concerns the current dollar rate.

What affects the U.S. dollar exchange rate?

U.S. data published on Friday showed that inflation in the country remains high. That could prompt the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to higher levels and not lower them for a longer period.

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester said Friday that higher inflation points to the need to raise interest rates further. However, she refrained from speculating on whether rates should be raised immediately by 50 basis points at the March meeting.

“The inflation numbers are still not where we need them to be,” she said in an interview with Bloomberg. The report is “consistent with the Fed needing to do a little more on the rate to make sure inflation slows again,” she said.

The euro stood at $1.0546 versus $1.0548 in the previous session. The value of the single European currency paired with the Japanese national currency was 143.66 yen, up from 143.84 yen on Friday. The dollar rate was 136.22 yen against 136.48 yen at the end of the previous trading day.

The DXY index, which shows the value of the U.S. dollar relative to six major world currencies, was up 0.06%. The WSJ Dollar, which tracks the dollar against 16 other currencies, rose by a similar amount.

The pound was trading at $1.1948, compared to $1.1944 on the previous trading day. The euro is close to Friday’s closing level of $0.8831.

Earlier we reported that US stock indices fell on Friday and for the whole week.