Dollar dips in Europe

The dollar slipped from an 11-month high against a basket of major currencies on Tuesday, pausing for breath after rallying almost 3 percent since Donald Trump won the US presidential election. Trump's shock victory has fuelled expectations of higher US growth, while his plans for heavy fiscal spending and trade protectionism are also seen as likely to fuel inflation. The dollar has had its best week in a year, while 10-year US government bond yields have jumped about 0.4 percentage points to 10-month highs.
Having reached 100.22 on Monday, its highest since early December 2015, and having gained for six consecutive days - its best run in six months - the dollar index, which measures the greenback's value against a basket of six major currencies, fell 0.2 percent to 99.908, while US bond yields eased. It had earlier fallen as much as 0.7 percent, but after data showing German GDP growth falling and UK inflation slowing, the greenback pared some losses.
"After the big rally, at this point there isn't any near-term catalyst for further upside. But if we have a solid US retail sales number today, that could further support the dollar," said ING's chief EMEA currency strategist, Petr Krpata, in London, referring to data due at 1330 GMT. "This is more of a stabilisation (than a change in direction), because the moves have been quite large, but equally we've already seen that plenty has been priced in, in terms of this reflation story from the US So the bar for further dollar upside is higher at this point."
Having hit an 11-month low of $1.0709 on Monday, the euro climbed 0.3 percent to $1.0766. "The market is getting a little bit cautious," said Commerzbank currency strategist Esther Reichelt in Frankfurt. "There might be some concern that the Fed gets more cautious due to the strong dollar (or) this might just be...a pause to see how other market participants are reacting to dollar strength."
"But in general I don't see this momentum changing. We see three rate hikes by the end of 2017." Still, rises in implied volatilities on currency pairs such as euro/dollar and dollar/yen suggest market players are also wary of the possibility of a sudden fall in the dollar despite its spectacular gains over the last few days, said Kazushige Kaida, head of forex trading at State Street in Tokyo. The onshore Chinese yuan fell to its weakest level in nearly eight years, breaking through 6.85 per dollar.