Investing.com – The dollar strengthened against the euro and the yen on Friday, as growing expectations for monetary easing in the euro zone and Japan dampened demand for the local currencies and supported the greenback.
EUR/USD was down 0.50% at 1.0822.
The euro weakened after European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said on Thursday that it would be necessary to “review and reconsider” the bank’s monetary policy stance at its next meeting in March, when new economic projections become available.
He said lower oil prices should help consumers and businesses, but the risks to euro zone growth remained to the downside.
The ECB left the deposit rate at -0.3% after December’s cut and held the benchmark refinancing rate steady at 0.05%.
The bank expects interest rates to remain at present or lower levels for an extended period of time, Draghi said.
USD/JPY rose 0.28% to trade at 118.04.
Sentiment on the yen was vulnerable after Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Thursday that he is not thinking of adopting a negative interest rate policy now, signalling that any further monetary easing will likely take the form of an expansion of its current massive asset-buying programme.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was up 0.33% at 99.47, still close to Thursday’s one-and-a-half month highs of 99.89.