Sun, Jun 08, 2003 - Page 10 News List

US unemployment revision beefs up greenback's value

AFP , NEW YORK

The dollar muscled its way higher Friday on signs that the US labor market was stabilizing, although analysts were divided on the trend for the greenback.

The euro slipped to US$1.1650 at 2100 GMT, down from US$1.1837 late in the day in New York on Thursday.

Against the yen, the greenback rose to ¥118.61 from ¥117.68 on Thursday.

The dollar attracted strong support on news that US non-farm payrolls fell by 17,000 in May, well below the 46,000 drop expected by US economists.

In addition revisions to the data erased many job losses in previous months. The earlier reported February-to-April jobs decline of 525,000 has now been revised to a drop of 272,000, Bear Stearns economists noted.

"The dollar got stronger after the unemployement report. There's a sense the economy is recovering a little bit," said Steven Gallagher at Societe Generale in New York.

Paul Mackell, strategist at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, said the dollar's rise actually began before the payroll report, with US currency starting to move higher against the yen.

He said the trend might have been due to intervention by Japanese authorities.

Trevor Dinmore, currency strategist at Deutsche Bank, also noted that the "dollar/yen led the move" on Friday.

The US payroll report then "accelerated the dollar's rise, across the board," Mackell said. "It was probably a dual trigger" that boosted the US currency.

Strategists said the euro could still gain ground against the dollar but the market is now likely to continue with the current, highly volatile trading range of around US$1.14 to US$1.20.

"We could have a period of consolidation for a couple of months or so," Mackell said, with currencies variously responding to weak or strong US data and rising or falling US stocks.

But the "underlying fundamentals are still negative for the dollar, and that's not going to change," he predicted.

Dinmore added that "we're still looking for a test of US$1.20 and we think it will head higher. But it's uncertain what the trigger would be."

Stephen Jen at Morgan Stanley said the notion of a dollar "crash" is unlikely, arguing that the "correction" in the dollar is about 70 percent complete.

"In the past year ... the market consensus has swung from a dollar-bullish view to a super dollar-bearish view," he said, adding that the apparent growth in the US economy will pull the greenback higher.

"From a cyclical perspective, both the euro-negatives and the dollar-positives will likely grow, and, in turn, temper the structural decline in the dollar," he said.

The dollar was being quoted in late trade at 1.3195 Swiss francs from 1.3000.

The pound was at US$1.6611 after US$1.6601 on Thursday.

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