The USD/CHF pair closed the second straight in the positive territory on Wednesday and reached its strongest level in nearly a week at 0.9208. With the trading action turning subdued during the European trading hours on Thursday, the pair seems to have gone into a consolidation phase and was last seen posting small daily gains at 0.9175. The broad-based USD strength helped USD/CHF continue to edge higher. After the FOMC's July policy meeting minutes revealed that policymakers saw it appropriate to prepare for asset tapering before the end of the year, the greenback continued to outperform its rivals.
The US Dollar Index (DXY) climbed to its highest level since November 93.50 before going into a consolidation phase. As of writing, the DXY was up 0.22% on the day at 93.35. On the other hand, the sharp decline witnessed in global equity indexes is helping the safe-haven CHF limit its losses for the time being. Currently, S&P Futures and Nasdaq Futures are down 0.8% and 0.65%, suggesting that safe-haven flows are likely to continue to dominate the financial markets in the second half of the day.