The euro rose to a six-week high versus the dollar as a Greek offer to spend as much as 10 billion euros ($13 billion) to buy back government securities eased concern the regions’ debt crisis is worsening.
The 17-nation euro gained as Greek bonds led advances in debt from the euro area’s lower-rated nations, including Spain and Italy. The Dollar Index sank to a one-month low amid a hardening of positions among U.S. lawmakers on how to avert the so-called fiscal cliff. Credit Suisse Group AG informed certain clients that it will start imposing negative interest rates on cash balances held in Swiss francs, a bank official said.
“The path of least resistance is north for the euro,” Thomas Molloy, chief dealer at FX Solutions LLC, an online currency-trading company in Saddle River, New Jersey, said in a telephone interview. “You’ve got a general risk-on feeling out there.”
The euro strengthened 0.4 percent to $1.3043 per euro at 9:12 a.m. New York time, after touching $1.3075, the most since Oct. 23. The shared currency added 0.2 percent to 107.33 yen. The U.S. currency dropped 0.2 percent to 82.29 yen.
Currency Performance
The euro has fallen 1.7 percent this year among the 10 developed-nation currencies tracked by Bloomberg Correlation Weighted Indexes. The yen had the largest decline, dropping 9.5 percent. The dollar lost 2.4 percent.
The difference between wagers for a decline in the euro versus the dollar and those on an advance -- so-called net shorts -- was 66,693 in the week ended Nov. 27 from 91,400 in the previous period, figures from the Washington-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission show. Net shorts for the yen climbed to 79,466, the most since 2007, according to the data.
Greece invited holders of bonds to tender their securities in a so-called modified Dutch auction, the Athens-based Public Debt Management Agency said in a statement today on its website. PDMA offered an average maximum purchase price for the bonds maturing from 2023 to 2042 of 34.1 percent. The offer runs to 5 p.m. London time on Dec. 7.
“The euro is performing well as something has been put together on the Greece front,” said Neil Jones, head of European hedge-fund sales at Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd. in London. “The level of confidence on the debt front, which is key for the euro, looks sound for now. One could also argue the lack of agreement over the fiscal cliff is a sell for the dollar.”
Switzerland’s second-biggest bank said in a notice distributed to bank clients via the Swift system today that it will communicate the currencies involved in its plan to charge negative interest rates on cash balances, plus the thresholds and rates on an individual basis to those customers during the next five business days.
“If you see a major move in euro-Swiss, you’ll just tend to see demand for euros across the board,” said Molloy of FX Solutions. “It will tend to support the euro against the dollar.”
Europe’s common currency gained as much as 0.4 percent against the Swiss franc, the biggest jump since September, and rose to 1.2084 euros.
Yields on Spanish bonds due in 10-years fell to 5.2 percent, the lowest since March, while similar-maturity Italian debt dropped to 4.4 percent, the lowest in a year.
Fiscal Cliff
The euro advanced versus most of 16 major peers as U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and House Speaker John Boehner blaming the other for a standoff that may lead to more than $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts in January.
Geithner said in an interview aired yesterday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Republicans in Congress will be responsible for hurting the economy if they refuse to raise tax rates on the highest-income earners as part of a deal. Boehner, a Republican, said on the “Fox News Sunday” program that the White House is wasting time.
The Dollar Index, which IntercontinentalExchange Inc. uses to track the greenback against currencies of six U.S. trading partners, declined 0.3 percent to 79.953, after falling to the least since Oct. 31.
Australia’s currency fell to the least in a week as amid speculation the Reserve Bank will lower borrowing costs at a meeting tomorrow. The nation’s statistics bureau said retail sales were unchanged in October after climbing in the previous two months. The figure compares with economist predictions for a 0.4 percent advance.
Interest-rate swaps data compiled by Bloomberg show traders see a more than 90 percent chance RBA Governor Glenn Stevens will cut the cash rate target by 25 basis points, or 0.25 percentage point, to 3 percent tomorrow, concurring with 19 of 28 economists in a Bloomberg News survey.
