On Wednesday morning, the forint was at 378.25 against the euro, which represented a 0.2 percent increase compared to Tuesday evening in terms of the Hungarian currency. Yesterday evening, the forint weakened parallel to the strengthening of the dollar after Fed President Jerome Powell’s words, and the euro-forint exchange rate briefly reached over 380. According to the signs, a slight correction started from here this morning, which can be helped by the fact that after 25.7% in January, Hungarian inflation slowed down to 25.4% in February, which met preliminary expectations. With this, after a long time, it can probably be said that we saw the peak in the price increase at the beginning of the year. However, according to analysts, the decrease will be slow from here, the rate may remain above 20 percent even until the middle of the year. After the current minimal reduction, it is expected that the MNB will continue to play a wait-and-see game in March, at most they can make the first cautious indication of a possible reduction of the benchmark interest rate. Against the dollar, we are now at 358.66, while the British pound costs HUF 424.2.
Among the forint’s competitors, the Polish zloty started the day with stagnation, and the Czech koruna weakened by 0.2% against the euro. In the emerging market, both the Turkish lira and the Russian ruble weakened slightly against the dollar.
We mentioned yesterday’s strengthening of the dollar after Jerome Poweel struck a particularly pessimistic tone in his congressional hearing. The euro-dollar exchange rate fell below 1.06, and is now around 1.0545, which is still a minimal change compared to Tuesday evening. The Japanese yen weakened by 0.3% and the British pound stagnated against the dollar.
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