The dollar was broadly flat on Thursday, but not before rallying to fresh highs, including a two-year peak against the yen, on relief buying after a report showed the latest US trade deficit had not widened as much as feared.
In intraday trading, the dollar vaulted above the 115.00 yen barrier for the first time since September 2003, absorbing good options-related selling just ahead of that level.
But the subsequent heavy bout of profit-taking spilled over to dollar selling against other currencies. Stop-loss sell orders and position squaring ahead of a heavy slate of US economic data releases on Friday pushed the greenback back down to where it opened the global session.
"It was fast and forceful," said David Mozina, head of New York foreign exchange strategy at Lehman Brothers in New York, of the dollar's late-day slide.
"But the market is fixated on one thing at the moment and that's the Fed. The Fed has shown no indication it's going to stop raising rates. Spreads at the short end are going to carry on widening in favour of the dollar," he said.
In recent weeks, the Federal Reserve has sent clear signals that it would keep tightening credit conditions to ward off inflation. Higher rates burnish the allure of some dollar-denominated assets such as short-term deposits.
In late trading, the dollar was at 114.35 yen, broadly flat on the day but well off its 25-month high of 115.10 yen hit earlier on Thursday.
Having sagged as low as $1.1915 earlier on Thursday, the euro recovered more than a cent in late trading to change hands at $1.2030, up slightly on the day.
The dollar was little changed against the Swiss franc at 1.2875 francs, while sterling was up 0.1 percent at $1.7555.
Early in New York trading on Thursday, the dollar had extended gains after the Commerce Department said the US trade deficit in August was $59.0 billion.
This wasn't as wide as the $59.5 billion forecast by economists or north of $60 billion, as some had feared.
Last year, the huge US trade deficit was a major drag on the dollar because it raised fears that the US would face difficulty in attracting enough foreign capital to fund it.
Still, this was the third widest trade deficit on record and details showed that overall imports were at record levels, as were imports of oil. Record imports from China of $22.4 billion are bound to keep the US deficit with China on the front burner as a political topic and put a lot of pressure on Washington to get Beijing to move further on currency flexibility, said Rebecca Patterson, currency strategist at J.P. Morgan Chase Bank in New York.
"To the extent that they don't, that's going to raise protectionist rhetoric in Congress, which I think is ultimately dollar-negative," she said.
Traders are now looking to a heavy US economic data slate on Friday, which will include the latest reports on consumer price inflation, retail sales, industrial production and consumer confidence as measured by the University of Michigan.
Some traders said the dollar's late retracement on Thursday was due to position squaring ahead of the barrage of data.
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