Tokyo - The dollar was mixed on Wednesday after disappointing US retail sales report aggravated concerns about the health of the world's top economy, while upbeat factory output data supported the embattled euro.
In Tokyo, the dollar was slightly higher at 119.64 yen from 119.44 yen in New York, but still down from above 119.80 yen earlier on Tuesday.
The euro rose to $1.0635 from $1.0628, while it was also at 127.21 yen against 127.24 yen.
“Most of the focus was on the (dollar) overnight with the release of the March retail sales report,” National Australia Bank said in a commentary.
“It was a slight miss, but much less so than the previous two reports.”
Retail sales rebounded from a three-month slump in March, but the 0.9 percent gain was slightly weaker than estimated. Excluding auto sales, retail sales rose only 0.4 percent instead of the 0.7 percent increase expected.
The health of the world's top economy is seen as key to the timing of a Federal Reserve interest rate hike. The US central bank has signalled that any rise this year largely depended on data.
With the tepid US figures, the euro gained support from a Eurostat report showing eurozone industrial production rebounded a solid 1.1 percent in February after falling in January.
The upbeat news comes after the European Central Bank launched a massive bond-purchase programme aimed at lowering borrowing costs and, in turn, boosting the tepid eurozone economy.
The encouraging eurozone report came ahead of the ECB's monetary policy meeting later on Wednesday.
On Tuesday, the yen picked up against the dollar and euro after an economic adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the unit had slid far enough.
In a television interview Monday evening, economic policy adviser Koichi Hamada said the yen was “considerably weak”, with 105 against the dollar being a more reasonable level.
He added there was no need for the Bank of Japan to expand its massive easing plan, which has helped lop about 50 percent off the yen's value since Abe launched an economy-boosting programme in early 2013.
“The BoJ's monetary policy is far bolder” than the ECB's, Tetsuya Inoue, a former BoJ official and the chief researcher for financial technology and markets at Nomura Research Institute, told Bloomberg News.
“The yen, which faces relatively larger easing, is more prone to face selling pressure than the euro.”
Investors were also keeping an eye on China where economic growth came in at 7.0 percent in the first three months of 2015, slightly better than the forecast in a survey by AFP but much slower than October-December.
It was also the worst for a single quarter since the first three months of 2009, in the depths of the global financial crisis.
AFP