Swiss franc holds near big highs vs majors, but smaller currencies little affected

The Swiss franc has been able to keep the enormous gains it made on Thursday after the SNB decision to scrap the three-year-old EUR/CHF floor, but smaller currencies are not affected as the dollar overall is little changed.

The SNB decision was a huge forex market shock but the impact seems limited to franc crosses, and to some extent to euro, through the EUR/CHF.

The USD index, the gauge that measures the greenback's trade-weighted strength against six major currencies, made a 0.9% jump immediately but pared the gains and ended the day little changed from the previous close.

The dollar index was affected to the extent of the impact in the EUR/USD pair rather than the USD/CHF pair as the former leads in the weightage list with 57.6% while the latter comes last with 3.6%.

The EUR/USD ended 1.45% down on Thursday when the USD/CHF plunged 14.7% on the day.

The Swiss franc traded higher across the board early Friday in Asia but pared the gains entirely before the European session and held close to Thursday's closing levels.

Meanwhile, major emerging Asian currencies traded mixed on Friday. The Chinese yuan was weak against the dollar while the Indian rupee, the Indonesian rupiah and the Thai baht rallied.

The baht rallied 0.6% on the day to a two-month high while the yuan was up 0.3%, moving off a one-month high touched on Thursday.

The Indian currency too made a 0.6% rise but is still weaker than the two-month high of 61.43 it hit intra-day on Thursday after the surprise rate cut by the Reserve Bank of India.

The rupee had ended sharply off the intra-day high amid speculation that the central bank bought dollars to check sharper volatility in the market.

There was market talk of dollar selling by the RBI a few days ago when the rupee was challenged to hit lows near 64.0/dollar.

The Indonesian currency strengthened to 12,550/dollar from 12,605/dollar in early trades but fell back to 12,595 by afternoon.