The euro traded just off the highest level in more than a month after an exit poll showed Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte\u2019s Liberals easily beat the anti-Islam Freedom Party of Geert Wilders in Wednesday\u2019s election, allaying concerns about the spread of populism in the currency bloc.<\/p>\n
The shared currency had the biggest advance against the dollar since June on Wednesday, extending gains made after the Federal Reserve left its projections for interest-rate increases unchanged. The Liberal Party is projected to take 33 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament compared with 20 seats for the Freedom Party,\u00a0with 93 percent of municipalities counted by the early hours of Thursday.<\/p>\n
The outcome was a worse result than opinion polls had predicted for Wilders, a rejection of his platform of pulling the Netherlands out of the European Union. The Netherlands vote has drawn scrutiny as it comes before next month\u2019s presidential election in France, where anti-euro candidate Marine Le Pen has vowed to take the nation out of the single currency.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing the Dutch election result, it\u2019s unlikely to see concerns heighten over the French election,\u201d says Shinichiro Kadota, a senior foreign-exchange strategist at Barclays Securities Japan Ltd. in Tokyo. \u201cExit polls showing the Dutch ruling party winning the election helped lift the euro amid dollar selling after the FOMC meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The euro traded at $1.0728 as of 12:27 p.m. Tokyo time Thursday, just off the\u00a0$1.0746 level it reached late Wednesday, the highest since Feb. 7. The yield on France\u2019s 10-year bonds fell five basis points to 1.04 percent earlier Wednesday.<\/p>\n
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