KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 16 ― The ringgit continued its positive momentum this morning, opening marginally higher against the US dollar due to the positive pivot in China's policy measures.

Analysts said this includes the country’s shift towards "living with Covid-19” and the new property measure to help its beleaguered mainland housing sector.

At 9am, the local note improved to 4.5345/5400 against the US dollar from yesterday’s close of 4.5390/5465.

SPI Asset Management managing director Stephen Innes said the property measure will support higher commodity prices, and since Malaysia is a keen exporter to China, this will support the ringgit via improved terms of trade.

"Markets, however, have a touch of ‘safe-haven’ or a US dollar bid due to what is probably an errant Russian missile landing in Poland, so foreign exchange traders will be watching this development closely,” he told Bernama.

Meanwhile, ActivTrades trader Dyogenes Rodrigues Diniz said the US dollar continued to lose ground against the ringgit, which seemed to be a natural correction after the former’s extensive rise over the past two years.

The United States (US) currency has declined by 4.6 per cent since November 4 ― the biggest drop since January 2016 ― following the release of the US Producer Price Index (PPI) data which came in below expectations at eight per cent versus the forecast of 8.3 per cent , he said.

"The PPI measures the rise in the price of goods and services used by companies to make their products, and the lower PPI points to signs of deflation, which may cause the US Federal Reserve to ease the pace of interest rate hikes.

"This could cause the dollar to lose value against its counterparts as it did against the ringgit in recent days,” he said.

Diniz added that from a technical point of view, the US dollar is hovering around a historical resistance region against the ringgit and shows 'extreme overbought' signals, noting that the next support region is at 4.4450.

Meanwhile, the ringgit traded higher against a basket of major currencies, except against the British pound.

It rose vis-a-vis the Japanese yen to 3.2512/2556 from 3.2573/2629 on Tuesday and strengthened against the euro to 4.6900/6957 from 4.7242/7320 yesterday.

The local currency gained versus the Singapore dollar to 3.3048/3093 from 3.3194/3252 at yesterday's close, but depreciated versus the British pound to 5.3747/3813 from 5.3678/3767 previously. ― Bernama