The euro succumbed to light profit-taking on Friday, a day after staging its biggest surge in six months on solid debt sales by Spain and tough talk on inflation by the chief of the European Central Bank. Speculation that European policy-makers may top up their war chest against attacks on eurozone sovereign debt is adding fuel to short-covering even though many market players suspect worries about the solvency of peripheral euro zone members will persist.
The euro slipped 0.2 percent in Asia to $1.3330, after climbing as high as $1.3383 the previous day. The single currency had risen more than 3 percent from a four-month low of $1.2960 marked at the start of the week, making it ripe for profit-taking. Its 55-day moving average, which was $1.3389 on Thursday and $1.3378 on Friday, is serving as immediate resistance, though a break of that level could spark another wave of short-covering.
If that happens, levels just above $1.34 could be the next hurdle, where it has a 38.2 percent retracement of the November-January slide as well as an Ichimoku cloud base. The euro also dropped 0.5 percent against the yen to 110.11 yen as Japanese exporters took advantage of its rise to a three-week high of 110.67 yen on Thursday to sell the currency.
It stood at 1.2855 Swiss franc, not far from Thursday's one-month high of 1.2885 as the franc comes under pressure ahead of a meeting later in the day between the Swiss government and representatives from Swiss business associations, banks and trade unions to discuss the implications of the strong franc. The euro also stayed close to a one-month high against the Australian dollar. As the greenback fell broadly after the data, the index of the dollar against a basket of currencies stood at 79.20, not far from the bottom of its trading band since December at 78.775.