By: Barbara Zigah
With investor risk appetite whetted by positive economic data from China, the common currency Euro moved up against the U.S. Dollar in Asian trading today, holding steady near a 5-month peak. As reported at 2:35 p.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the Euro gained .2% to trade at $1.3663; yesterday, it briefly touched on $1.3684, a 5-month high, helped by encouraging data from the ECB. Since June, the Euro rally has helped move it 15% higher versus the greenback, this week pushing through both the 55-week and 100-week moving average before meeting resistance at the April peak.
The greenback also lost ground against the Japanese Yen, trading at 83.47 Yen, a decline of .1% and slightly higher than yesterday’s trough of 83.16 Yen. It was last month’s 15-year low that had Japan’s Ministry of Finance intervening. Some analysts believe that intervention might be forthcoming should the Yen again drop below the 15-year low of 82.87 Yen. The Minister of Finance confirmed today that decisive steps would be taken when deemed necessary; for many traders, though they believe that comment to be simply rhetoric, and believe the earlier intervention had a lot to do with the end of the fiscal half year approaching.