Investing.com – The U.S. dollar stabilized near a seven-week high on Thursday ahead of a key inflation report, while the euro remained near recent lows.

At 04:15 ET (08:15 GMT), the dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six other currencies, was trading broadly unchanged at 102.684, close to seven-week highs seen earlier this week.

CPI data seems to be high

The dollar is trading in a narrow range on Thursday but remains elevated following Friday’s mighty report that led the market to largely rule out the chance of another 50-basis-point cut in November.

The Fed’s September meeting showed that policymakers fully supported the central bank’s 50-basis-point cut at the time, but they made no commitment on the pace of future monetary easing.

“Reading the minutes of the September FOMC meeting, there did not appear to be an urgent need for the Fed to cut interest rates – even though it cut them by 50 basis points,” ING analysts said in a note. “It was more of a sense that the fear of inflation had passed, unemployment had risen and the approach to risk management needed to recalibrate policy.”

The main focus was on a date later in the day, which will likely factor into the Fed’s interest rate plans. The data is expected to show that headline CPI inflation has declined slightly, while core CPI has remained flat.

Traders estimated a 79.5% chance of a 25 basis point cut in November and a 20.5% chance of holding.

Retail sales growth in Germany

In Europe, rates were unchanged at 1.0939, after rising 1.6% month-on-month in August, a slight improvement on the 1.5% gain recorded in the previous month.

However, this good news was tempered by the German government lowering its growth forecast for 2024, and Economy Minister Robert Habeck delayed Wednesday predicted that the gross domestic product in the euro zone’s largest economy will shrink by 0.2% this year, compared to earlier growth forecast of 0.3%. .

This would mean that Germany is expecting its first two-year recession in almost two decades.

It meets next week and is expected to ease policy again, having already cut interest rates twice this year.

rose 0.1% to 1.3081 ahead of the release of the Bank of England’s latest credit conditions survey, as investors look for clues about the likely path of the central bank’s interest rate cuts going forward.

The Japanese yen is struggling

fell 0.1% to 149.13, after hitting its highest level in more than two months.

The Japanese currency has received little support from higher-than-expected producer prices as markets bet that the Bank of Japan will struggle to raise interest rates further.

fell 0.1% to 7.0771, with the yuan paring recent weakness as investors looked to further stimulus measures from Beijing to support growth.

China’s finance ministry said it would hold a briefing on Saturday to outline fiscal stimulus plans after a string of recent stimulus measures largely disappointed markets.