The Wall Street Journal-20080212-Euro Rises Slightly on Dollar

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Euro Rises Slightly on Dollar

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The dollar and euro traded taking the lead yesterday in New York to make for a data-light session.

With no significant data in the U.S. to guide it, the currency pair was near its late price from Friday. Meanwhile, the dollar fell against the yen. Markets were closed in Japan yesterday for a national holiday, and other Asian markets remained closed as well for the lunar new year.

"The market is lacking direction today. It's traded sideways for the most part," said Mark Frey, head foreign-exchange trader at Custom House in Victoria, British Columbia.

"I'll be looking at commodities and equities overnight," he said, indicating that yesterday's important influences will continue into today.

In New York, the euro rose to $1.4523 from $1.4512 late Friday, while the dollar fell to 106.91 yen from 107.34 yen. The euro slipped to 155.26 yen from 155.78 yen. The British pound rose to $1.9513 from $1.9457. The dollar was at 1.1017 Swiss francs from 1.1022 Swiss francs.

The euro entered the North American session ahead of the dollar after the heads of the European Central Bank and the Euro Group said Europe has no need for the type of measures U.S. authorities have pursued, such as an economic stimulus package or repeated interest- rate cuts, to ward off an economic downturn.

Those comments had helped push the euro as high as $1.4578 overnight. But many foreign-exchange analysts didn't seem to buy the idea, and the euro lost those gains early in the New York session.

Elsewhere, the British pound also was lifted by the late-day bounce of risk appetite, extending an earlier rally on surprisingly high price data.