KUALA LUMPUR; The ringgit extended its slide against the US dollar to hit the 4.16-mark at the close today as investors continued to shy away from Malaysian assets amid COVID-19 fears.
At 6pm, the local unit depreciated to 4.1600/1620 against the greenback from Tuesday’s close of 4.1520/1560.
AxiCorp’s chief market strategist Stephen Innes said the markets were still trying to make sense of the COVID-19’s impact to the economy.
“Additionally, the ringgit was negatively impacted after the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) fixed the yuan daily reference rate above 7.00 amid a stronger US dollar,” he told Bernama.
The PBoC, on Wednesday, set the yuan’s daily reference rate at 7.0012 versus Tuesday’s fix at 6.9826.
The last time the central bank fixed the rate weaker than 7.0 -level was on Dec 25, 2019.
“I think the market remains very definitive until investors could glean greater clarity from (China’s) economic data,” he added.
At the close, the ringgit was traded mixed against other major currencies.
It fell against the Singapore dollar to 2.9885/9910 from 2.9810/9850 yesterday and declined against the pound to 5.4101/4143 from 5.3951/4020.
It rose vis-a-vis the yen to 3.7729/7761 from 3.7838/7878 on Tuesday and appreciated against the euro to 4.4932/4970 from 4.4950/5009. – Feb 19, 2020, Bernama
