 "U.S. one-hundred dollar bills are seen in this photo illustration at a bank in Seoul")
The dollar steadied early on Friday, given some breathing space after a recent surge by the euro lost momentum in wake of dovish comments by a policymaker, while profit-taking trimmed some of the big gains the Australian dollar made on a solid domestic jobs report.
The euro was little changed at $1.0944 > after shedding about 0.7% overnight. It was forced back from a 1-month high of $1.1044 scaled midweek after ECB Governing Council member Erkki Liikanen said Thursday the central bank stands ready to ease monetary policy further if required.
An overnight rebound on Wall Street, which ended a 3-day losing run, also slightly improved risk appetite and nudged up US debt yields in favour of the dollar.
The common currency was still poised to end the week on a 0.5% gain, having soared after the ECB delivered a much tamer-than-expected monetary easing package late last week and disappointed euro bears.
The greenback may have suffered big losses against the euro this week but the seemingly inevitable divergence in US and European monetary policy was expected to continue supporting the dollar in the longer term. The Federal Reserve is widely expected to hike interest rates next week for the first time in nearly a decade.
Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Mizuho Securities in Tokyo, noted that whether investors continue to cover short positions in the euro when German bond yields have stopped rising is a key factor deciding if the common currency can sustain its recent gains.
"Unless a powerful dollar-bearish factor emerges, the euro's recent bounce is likely to peter out," he said.
The dollar was up 0.3% at 121.88 yen >, putting further distance between a 1-month low of 121.075 plumbed earlier in the week. The dollar was still on track for a 1% weekly loss versus the yen. The safe-haven Japanese currency attracted bids this week as a slide in commodity prices bruised investor risk appetite.
The Australian dollar was down 0.7% at $0.7261 > after soaring more than 1% to a high of $0.7335 on Thursday after data showed Australia's jobless rate had hit a 19-month low in November.
The South African rand fetched 15.4085 per dollar >, not too far from a record low of 15.4895 hit overnight after a surprise sacking of the country's finance minister caught investors flat-footed.
