By: Barbara Zigah
In Asian trading today, the U.S. Dollar held close to a 3-month peak versus the Euro as market players moved to short cover their U.S. currency positions ahead of this week’s Christmas holiday. The U.S. Dollar held firm trading at $1.4341 against the single currency Euro; on Friday, it had hit a peak of $1.4262 on the EBS trading platform, which was the highest trade since early September. The Euro has been struggling in recent days, and continues to remain vulnerable, especially given the European Central Bank (ECB) position that bank collateral rules would not be tightened, even if there was another downgrade to a Euro zone country’s debt rating which caused them to fall below the requisite ECB standard of A-, as in the possible case of Greece. Giving investors more cause for concern about the direction of the Euro, the ECB estimate of possible bank write downs was recently raised.

The U.S. Dollar slipped against the Japanese yen, trading at 90.31 Yen, a decline of .1%. On Friday, the U.S. Dollar moved to a new 6-week peak versus the Yen, trading at 90.91 Yen; investors expect to see Japanese exporters issuing additional sell orders in an attempt to repatriate their overseas earnings. A report recently issued showed that Japanese exports declined last month by 6.2% from the previous year’s figure, largely attributed to growing demand in Asia.