Dollar Crashes As Fed Trims Rate Hike Forecasts

The dollar plunged on Thursday, March 18, lifting world shares to their highest level of the year, after the Federal Reserve scaled down its own expectations of the number of U.S. rate hikes likely over the next nine months.

The Fed, via its ‘dot plot’ system, which charts what rate moves policymakers expect, effectively chopped those forecasts in half, from four hikes to two for the year.

It was a signal that triggered a plunge in the dollar and a surge in risk appetite that rolled from Wall Street to Asia and then into Europe, where London .FTSE, Frankfurt .GDAXI and Paris .FCHI opened 0.5 to 0.8 percent higher and bond yields fell. [GVD/EUR] Commodity markets cheered too.