NEW YORK: The dollar softened on Tuesday after touching an 11-year high against an index of other major currencies as dealers awaited details of Europe's massive bond-buying program and a key U.S. jobs report.
Trading was choppy. The dollar surrendered early gains against the euro on widening interest-rate differences and was last flat against Europe's shared currency and down against the Japanese yen.
The U.S. dollar index was off 0.17 percent at 95.305 after rising to a peak of 95.570 last seen in September 2003.
"Markets are looking for the next impetus," said Dean Popplewell, chief currency strategist at Oanda in Toronto. "We may get that from the European Central Bank on Thursday or a pleasant spark on Friday from the non-farm payroll report."
Europe's central bank will finalize the details of its 1.1 trillion euro bond-buying program on Thursday and may start buying immediately afterwards.
On Friday, the U.S. government releases its often market-moving monthly employment report, which economists expect to show a robust addition of 240,000 jobs during February, according to a Reuters poll.
The euro was last little changed against the dollar at $1.1181.
The dollar fell against the yen after an economic adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the U.S. currency could not sustain more gains.
Etsuro Honda, whom some analysts described as a proponent of yen weakness, told the Wall Street Journal that the dollar's strength against the yen might be at a "kind of upper limit in the exchange rate's comfort zone."
The comments pulled the dollar off a three-week high of 120.27 yen hit earlier due to a spike in U.S. debt yields. It last traded at 119.55, down 0.5 percent.
The Australian dollar rose 1 percent against the greenback after the Reserve Bank of Australia opted to leave its policy rate unchanged at a record low of 2.25 percent. The Aussie jumped to a high of $0.7845 before easing back to $0.7833, still up 0.8 percent on the day.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.