Investing.com - The dollar was quoted sharply higher against the yen and Aussie in Asia on Thursday as the Fed moved to hike rates as expected for the first time in a year.
USD/JPY changed hands at 117.00, up 1.57%, while AUD/USD fell 1.23% to 0.7408.
The Federal Reserve hiked its policy rate by 25 basis points on Wednesday for the first increase in a year and said as many as three more hikes could come in 2017.
Ahead in Australia, jobs data for November is due with employment change figures showing an expected 20,000 gain under a participation rate of 64.5%, a tick up, and a steady unemployment rate of 5.6%.
Overnight, the dollar rose on the Fed's unexpectedly hawkish tone -- it announced three likely rate increases next year, in addition to today's boost.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, was last quoted at 102.07, up 0.98%.
The stronger currency comes against a backdrop of plans by President-elect Donald Trump to cut taxes and ramp up spending on infrastructure, with investors particularly keen to hear comments from Fed Chair Janet Yellen and eye Treasury yields, which rose sharply to around 2.576%, after trading in a 2.424% to 2.585% range. The earlier high levels were last seen in late September 2014.
Yellen in a press conference emphasized that the changes were only "a very modest adjustment in the path of the Federal Funds Rate" that involved "changes by only some of the participants."
Yellen noted that "some of the participants but not all of the participants did incorporate some assumption of a change in fiscal policy into their projections," and this "may have been a factor that was one of several that occasioned the shifts."
"But I want to emphasize that the shifts that you see here are really very tiny," Yellen said.
She added that While the labor market remains solid, the Fed was "not seeing evidence in labor markets of very substantial upward pressures on labor that could signify extreme shortages of labor that could propel inflation higher in a very rapid way, and inflation is still operating below our objective."