Dollar rangebound against yen

TOKYO: The dollar was stuck in a tight range against the yen in Asia on Wednesday with month-end demand dominating transactions as investors await a key US jobs report due out later this week.

The dollar fetched 76.57 yen in Tokyo trade against 76.70 yen in New York late Tuesday.

The euro was flat at $1.4433 compared to $1.4437. The European common currency fell to 110.48 yen from 110.77 yen.

The dollar-yen pair moved little in the wake of media reports that Japan's new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did not discuss foreign exchange matters in their phone talks Wednesday.

"The strong yen will likely persist, in part as it's hard for Japan to gain acceptance overseas on solo interventions," Masanobu Ishikawa, general manager of spot FX at Tokyo Forex & Ueda Harlow, told Dow Jones Newswires.

"The US benefits from the weaker dollar as it helps in the goal of pushing up exports, despite the occasional lip-service from officials to a 'strong dollar policy,'" Ishikawa said.

The yen hit a postwar high against the dollar earlier this month.

Tomohiro Ishikawa, dealer at Chuo Mitsui Trust and Banking, said: "Amid the dearth of fresh trading cues, trading here is quiet, dominated by month-end real demand-backed transactions."

US stocks recouped their early losses to end higher overnight after minutes from the US Federal Reserve's latest policy-making meeting indicated that the Fed could move to stimulate the US economy.

The minutes from their August 9 meeting, released Tuesday, showed some officials raised "QE3" as a possibility.

In the previous "QE" quantitative easing programs since the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve injected money into the economy via Treasury bond purchases. The move helped weaken the dollar against other major currencies.

"The news about minutes were negative for the dollar but not big enough to break through the dollar's recent ranges against the yen," Ishikawa said.

"Market participants are likely to gradually recede to the sidelines to see Friday's US jobs report," he added.

The euro was also rangebound against the dollar after consumer confidence indices for August dropped on both sides of the Atlantic, darkening the clouds hanging over the US and eurozone economies.

US consumer confidence plunged in August to the lowest level in more than two years as consumers worried about the economy amid a political standoff over the nation's debt, a key survey showed Tuesday.

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index tumbled almost 15 points from July, to 44.5, the lowest reading since April 2009.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011