Early trade: Dollar heads for strongest week in nearly two years

The US dollar rose on Friday and headed for its strongest weekly performance in almost two years against a basket of currencies after lackluster results in an Italian bond auction weighed on the euro. The ICE Futures US dollar index, a gauge of the greenback's performance against six major currencies, was last up 0.3 percent at 82.895 after hitting a high of 82.938, the strongest level since late July.
On the week, it was tracking a rise of 3.14 percent, its strongest performance since October 2008. The euro was down 0.5 percent at $1.2764 after falling to a session trough of $1.2753, the lowest since July 22, according to Reuters data. It was on track to fall 4 percent against the dollar this week, the most since May. Against the yen, the dollar rose as high as 86.39 yen, according to Reuters data, before retreating to 86.24, up 0.3 percent. Resistance was seen ahead of stops at 86.50 yen. The dollar hit 15-year lows of 84.72 yen on electronic trading platform EBS earlier this week.