Yen climbs in Asia

The euro extended losses on Monday after repeated attempts to break above a resistance level failed, placing focus on renewed worries about eurozone debt problems and giving the dollar a much needed reprieve after heavy selling in the past few weeks.
The euro fell 0.4 percent to $1.4377 after another try at rising clearly above $1.45 failed on Friday and as markets grew uneasy after Finnish voters handed the anti-euro True Finns party a crucial role in parliament and possibly into government. The yen rose broadly, at one point hitting its highest in more than two weeks against both the dollar and the euro. The dollar fell to two-week lows below 82.95 yen, and was last down 0.3 percent at 82.88 yen.
The euro hit its lowest in more than two weeks against the yen at 118.94 yen on trading platform EBS and was last down 0.7 percent at 119.14 yen, its drop having gained steam after triggering stop-loss selling. The euro's failure to hold above $1.45 suggests that a bigger near-term pullback may be in store. Earlier, the euro briefly dipped below support near $1.4365, right around the conversion line on the daily Ichimoku chart, a form of Japanese technical analysis widely used among market players.
A clear break of that level and the April 6 intraday high of $1.4350 could open the way toward a deeper drop. Possible downside targets include $1.4263, the 23.6 percent retracement of the euro's February to April rally, and $1.4104, the 38.2 percent retracement of the same move.
Euro/yen fell below a cluster of support in the 119.20 yen to 119.30 yen area that coincides with some intraday lows hit earlier in April. The trader for a Japanese bank said the euro could drop towards 115 yen in the near-term. The yen had slid broadly in the wake of joint-yen selling intervention by the Group of Seven industrialised nations on March 18, before regaining some ground last week.
The yen fell to 2-1/2 year lows against the Australian dollar, an 11-month low on the euro and a six-month trough versus the dollar earlier in April. The yen fell on market expectations that the Bank of Japan was likely to lag behind other central banks in rising interest rates, especially when considering the economic impact from a massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan's north-east on March 11. The dollar rose 0.2 percent against a basket of major currencies to 74.997, after having touched a 16-month low of 74.617 last Thursday.