US dollar gains as global growth worries ease

The US dollar maintained its dominance against most of major counterparts last week despite a significant drop in the country's manufacturing activity, Kuwait National Bank (NBK) said in a weekly report on Sunday.
Positive figures from China and the Euro zone helped lift market sentiment, pushing investors risk appetite higher, the weekly report added.
According to the report, sales of previously owned US homes rose in September to the highest level in a year, adding to signs that residential real estate will be a plus for the economy. The cost of living in the US barely rose last month, restrained by decelerating prices for a broad array of goods and services that signal the Federal Reserve can keep interest rates low well into 2015.
As for US manufacturing sector, the report said it slowed in October to its lowest rate of growth since July. US Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index fell to 56.2 from September's final reading of 57.5 versus expectations for it to drop to 57.0.
In the meantime, claims for US unemployment benefits held below 300,000 for a sixth straight week last week, indicating that the labor market was shrugging off concerns over a slowing global economy.
As for Europe, the manufacturing activity in the Eurozone expanded at a faster rate than expected in October, easing worries over the region's growth outlook, despite the September fall of the German consumer morale for the first time in more than a year and a half, the report said.
On the UKeconomy, it said that increased risks from a slump in the euro-area economy kept Bank of England officials divided for a third month on whether to increase the key interest rate, while Britain's rapid economic recovery eased as expected during the third quarter, as services output growth slowed and manufacturing expanded at the weakest pace in 18 months, according to official data issued on Friday.
The report noted that China grew at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis in the September quarter and a risk missing its official target for the first time in 15 years, adding to concerns that the world's second-largest economy is weighing down on global growth.
A pick-up in factory output and government confidence that further slowing in the property sector offset the labor market remains stable, and economists remained divided on whether authorities would step in with major stimulus measures such as interest rate cuts. China's gross domestic product grew 7.3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier and the weakest rate since the first quarter of 2009, slightly above the 7.2 percent expected and slower than the 7.5 percent growth in the second quarter, the report concluded.