FX round-up: Dollar jumps on growth divergence, rouble softens on oil price slump

The US dollar shot higher against the Euro and Sterling on Tuesday amid ongoing political uncertainty in Italy and around Brexit together with mixed news on the US-China trade talk front.

News had surfaced overnight that the US might be mulling placing curbs on exports of 'dual use' high-technology products to China, although late in the session White House National Economic Council director, Larry Kudlow, sounded a rather optimistic note on the outlook for progress in trade talks with Beijing.

Meanwhile, in Italy, all eyes were on whether the European Commission would start an Excessive Deficit Procedure against Rome the next day.

As of 2015 GMT, the euro/dollar was down by 0.77% to 1.13655 and cable by 0.5% at 1.27861, although dollar/yen was up by only 0.13% to 112.690, with the US dollar spot index up by 0.69% to 96.8540.

Commodity currencies were also lower, with the Greenback adding 1.03% to 1.33122 versus its Canadian rival while the Aussie was off by 1.0% to 0.7182.

Emerging market currencies however were finding a bit of a reprieve, at least outside of the Russian rouble.

In fact, versus the Brazilian real the US dollar was down by 0.09% to 3.7571 and against the Mexican peso by just 0.21% to 20.4145.

Russia's rouble on the other hand was jumping 0.92% to 66.2256 as crude oil futures extended their recent slide lower.

Nevertheless, the latest batch of economic data out of Moscow was in fact generally better-than-expected, with the year-on-year pace of growth in output from the industrial sector accelerating from 2.1% to 3.7%, on the back of stronger activity in mining, agriculture and construction.

The one area of weakness was retail sales, which slowed from a 2.2% pace in September to 1.9% for last month.

Even so, analysts at Capital Economics were confident that the Russian economy was set to accelerate in the fourth quarter and in 2019.