SEOUL: The South Korean won rose against the U.S. dollar Wednesday afternoon, gaining for a second consecutive day as traders remained cautious ahead of results from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s policy meeting and foreign investors continued their massive buying of local stocks.
The local currency was quoted at 1,126.10 per dollar as of 1:25 p.m., up 2.8 won from the previous session’s close.
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The Federal Reserve is scheduled to release its formal statement after a two-day meeting in Washington on Wednesday that could provide concrete clues over the timing of a hike in U.S. borrowing costs.
The U.S. dollar remained weak against its major global counterparts following weaker-than-expected economic data ranging from factory output to consumer sentiment.
Divergence in the global monetary policy has been growing as the Fed is set to raise the key rate earlier than anticipated while central banks of other major and emerging economies are moving to cut it to ward off deflation and boost sagging economic growth.
Last week, the Bank of Korea (BOK), the country’s central bank, slashed its policy rate by a quarter percentage point to an all-time low of 1.75 percent, expressing concerns that the growth pace of Asia’s fourth-largest economy is slower than expected.
