Lebanese Forex Market
The Lebanese Pound (LP) continues to be steady within the official range of $/LP 1,514 – 1,514.5 against the dollar, with a mid-price of $/LP 1,514.25 this week.
The peg also continues to be supported by the Central Bank’s solid foreign assets, which stood at $37.27B at end 2019.
In turn, the dollarization ratio of private sector deposits increased from 70.62% in December 2018 to 74.69% in November 2019.
Over the week, the Euro slid against the dollar-pegged LP, with the currency pair going from €/LBP 1,677.58 last week to €/LBP 1,670.05 this week. In turn, the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) of the LP steadied at 117.84 points by the week ending Jan. 10, 2020.
International Forex Market
The Euro/USD currency pair went from last week’s €/USD 1.1128, to €/USD 1.1078 by Jan 10, 2020. In fact, the US dollar strengthened marginally over the week. In details, fears of a protracted conflict between the U.S. and Iran have now mostly cooled following a week of tensions between the two countries. In addition, traders will now focus on monthly optimistic December U.S. jobs data.
Commodities
International gold prices remained on an uptrend, rising by a weekly 0.10% to $1,549/ounce by Jan.10. It’s worthy to mention that gold prices rose significantly on Tuesday to reach $1,574/ounce, the highest closing in more than 5 years on back of last week’s US airstrike near Baghdad’s airport that killed General Qassem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top military commanders.