| The major event for December was the Federal Reserve policy meeting. It turned out to be very positive for the US dollar as the Fed not only hiked interest rates but also updated its economic forecasts, promising more hikes in 2017. The currency paused its rally by the year end due to profit-taking, but most market analysts maintained the optimistic outlook for the greenback. The European Central Bank made the opposite move, making its policy more accommodative. Traders pushed the euro higher initially as the ECB reduced the size of its monthly asset purchases. But then they realized that the prolonged running time of the asset-purchase program means that overall quantitative easing was expanded, not reduced. The Great Britain pound suffered from the resurgence of Brexit fears. In particular, Scotland and Northern Ireland felt that the Brexit hurts their rights as they were voting for staying in the European Union, therefore they will make attempts to avoid leaving the EU, perhaps going as far as having an independence vote. The Japanese yen was also among soft currencies, partly due to disappointing economic growth, though the Bank of Japan improved its economic forecasts after the December policy meeting. The Swiss National Bank did not change its policy, continuing to insist that the Swiss franc is overvalued, therefore the central bank will continue to perform interventions to weaken the currency. The Canadian dollar was strong in December due to the rally of oil prices that followed the announcement from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at the end of November about cutting production of oil. The currency was hurt a bit by the unexpected drop of gross domestic product and inflation. Australia's GDP contracted as well, and that was hurting the Australian dollar. While the Reserve Bank of Australia left its monetary policy unchanged and even did not complain about the exchange rate, analysts considered the dovish tone of the meeting's minutes as a sign that the bank may cut interest rates in the future. The New Zealand dollar did not perform well last month even though the hawkish stance expressed in the speech of the central bank's head led to speculations that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand may start raising interest rates in the near future. Gold continued to demonstrate an awful performance, falling for seven weeks in a row before rising a bit during the last days of 2016. With that said, the commodity ended the year with a gain for the first time since 2012. | 
