The shekel has weakened against the major currencies at the opening of this week's trading on the foreign exchange market. The shekel-dollar rate is currently up 0.87% in comparison with Friday's representative rate, at NIS 3.9973, after briefly climbing above NIS 4/$ earlier. The shekel-euro rate is up 0.56%, at NIS 4.887/€.
The Bank of Israel will announce its interest rate for February after the representative exchange rates are fixed today. Analysts expect the central bank to leave its interest rate unchanged at 0.25%.
Yossi Frank, CEO of NRG Finance Solutions Ltd., told "Globes" today, "On Friday, the shekel-dollar rate managed to cross the psychological NIS 4/$ barrier, apparently as a result of stop-losses that came into effect after several players who had bet on the shekel broke because of the dollar's aggressive rise on world markets. This, however, does not necessarily mean much, since most businesses and financial institutions in Israel are not active on Friday afternoons.
"There will be considerable pressure around this rate, since we have seen that there are plenty of players prepared to sell the dollar and buy shekels. There were also those who were waiting for the euro to continue dropping after the election in Greece, but so far that expectation has not materialized, and so it is more likely that we shall see profit taking this morning and a return below the NIS 4/$ barrier. Unless the dollar continues to strengthen on world markets, particularly against the euro, we are not likely to see a significant breakthrough above this level."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 26, 2015
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