The euro was little changed making minor gains against the dollar. Daily Covid-19 infections from France, Spain and Italy accelerated to all-time highs in recent days. Fast rising Treasury yields gave the dollar an additional boost on Monday over the shared European currency.
The British pound slightly strengthened against the dollar. The British pound benefitted from the fact that the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson suggested that there would be no further tightening of measures soon.
The USD/JPY jumped to its highest level since January 2017 as (sharply) rising US bond yields continued to make the difference between the Japanese and US bonds even larger, pressuring the yen.
Gold prices were little changed trading mainly above the $1,800 level. Persistently high inflation and worries over Omicron provided a boost to the yellow metal price, while yields heavily weighed on gold on Monday.
US stock indexes consolidated earlier gains with the S&P500 touching a fresh all-time high on Monday. Apple became the first company to record three-trillion dollars market capitalization.
Oil prices rose consolidating earlier gains at the beginning of the New Year. The OPEC+ meeting, scheduled for January 4, will probably decide to go ahead with a planned 400,000 barrels-per-day production increase in February. Oil also gained some support from an outage in Libya, where output will be cut by 200,000 barrels per day for a week due to pipeline maintenance.