The peso weakened against the dollar on Wednesday, March 14, due to strong US inflation data amid the offshore geopolitical noise.

The local currency ended Wednesday’s session at P52.07 versus the greenback, three centavos weaker than the P52.04 finish on Tuesday.

The peso opened the session slightly weaker at P52.06 per dollar. Its intraday low stood at P52.12, while its best showing was at P52.02 against the greenback.

Dollars traded rose to $500.35 million from the $359.8 million booked in the previous session.

A trader attributed the slightly weaker peso to the strong inflation data released on Tuesday night (Manila time) amid the geopolitical noise from the US.

“The peso weakened today following strong US inflation data released last Tuesday night despite continued geopolitical noise,” the trader said in an e-mail.

The US consumer price inflation rose in February, well within expectations, the Labor Department reported on Tuesday.

Excluding food an energy prices, the consumer price index rose 0.2% in February month-on-month for both headline and core gauges, in line with the market consensus.

Meanwhile, the trader said the peso slightly weakened amid “continued geopolitical noise concerning firing of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and news of possible imposition of trade tariffs on China,” factors that may temper the dollar’s strength.

On Tuesday, President Donald J. Trump fired Mr. Tillerson as the secretary of state, which will be replaced by the incumbent Central Intelligence Agency Mike Pompeo as his replacement.

“We got along actually quite well, but we disagreed on things,” Mr. Trump told reporters outside the White House.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump is seeking to slap China tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports, hitting directly the the technology and the telecommunication sectors.

On the other hand, another trader said the pair only moved sideways today.

“The dollar-peso trading was fairly quiet today, but during the afternoon session, we had saw some buying… there were client flow somewhere,” a trader told BusinessWorld over the phone yesterday.

For Thursday, the first trader sees the peso to move between P51.90 and P52.20, while another trader gave a slimmer range of P51.95 to P52.15.

“The local currency is expected to depreciate further ahead of March US initial jobless claims data release [today] which is seen as a leading indicator of unemployment data,” the first trader noted. — Karl Angelo N. Vidal

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