LONDON: The yen rose on Friday as investors covered short positions and shunned risk, helping the Japanese currency move away from recent lows against the dollar and euro.
The dollar fell 0.4 percent to 104.32 yen, down more than a full yen from a five-year high of 105.45 yen set on Thursday. Traders said there had been some stop-loss dollar offers at levels between 104.50 to 104.30 yen.
Moves can also be larger when volumes are thin, with Japanese markets players not back from their New Year holidays until next week.
The euro, the top-performing major currency of 2013, shed 0.7 percent to 142.26 yen, extending its losses in the wake of its 1.2 percent slide the previous day.
The single currency pulled away from a five-year peak of 145.675 yen set last Friday.
Investors tend to flock to the yen in times of market stress. Asian stock markets led global stocks lower on Friday, as investors booked profits in the wake of the S&P 500's best yearly advance since 1997.
The 10-year US Treasury yield also dipped back to levels below 3 percent, offering less support to the dollar. "January is a bit of a messy month for foreign exchange," said Simon Smith, head of research at FxPro. "Volumes are still thin.
Things are very much driven by flows. "I don't think the yen is a one-way bet in 2014. The easy wins have been had.
Always the most run-over people in the markets are yen bears." Smith expects dollar/yen to end the year at 109 yen per dollar. Betting on the dollar against the yen has been a big trade for hedge funds and other investors over the past year, who see the Bank of Japan's ultra-loose monetary policy and potential for more stimulus this year as one of the clearer themes in tricky currency markets.
Data on currency futures positions on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange shows that currency speculators had increased their net short position in the yen to 143,822 contracts in the week ended Dec. 24, the largest since July 2007 and up from 62,395 contracts in late October.
"The dollar/yen run-up has been quite fast, quite rapid. So a bit of pullback is kind of normal for dollar/yen," said Sim Moh Siong, FX strategist for Bank of Singapore.
The dollar index was marginally lower at 80.622, having hit a two-week high on Thursday as a slew of generally positive US economic data reinforced expectations the Federal Reserve will continue to move away from its bond purchases.
The euro hit a two-week low against the dollar of $1.36285 and was last at $1.3633, down 0.3 percent.
The single currency - whose second-half rally was driven by factors such as euro zone banks repatriating funds to shore up their capital bases and repaying cheap loans to the ECB, which tightens liquidity - is retreating from a two-year high of $1.3894 last Friday.
Marshall Gittler, head of global FX strategy at IronFX Global, said 2014 had begun with the reversal of last year's trends.
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