Investing.com - The yen gained in Asia as investors parsed comments from Federal Reserve officials for insight on prospects of a rate hike next month.
USD/JPY changed hands at 122.53, down 0.04%, while AUD/USD traded at 0.7134, up 0.11%.
Japan reports industrial production with a gain of 1.)% seen month-on-month in September.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, rose 0.04% to 98.61.
Overnight, the dollar trimmed gains against the other major currencies on Thursday, but still remained close to a seven-month peak after Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen omitted to comment on future monetary policy moves.
On Thursday, a half dozen monetary policymakers from the Federal Open Market Committee, including Yellen and vice chairman Stanley Fischer were scheduled to make public comments ahead of its highly anticipated meeting next month on Dec. 15-16. In welcoming remarks at the Fed's conference on Monetary Policy Implementation and Transmission in the Post-Crisis, Yellen declined to address the FOMC's near-term outlook regarding a potential rate hike or the current state of the U.S. economy.
Instead, Yellen spoke briefly on the importance of assessing how monetary policy impacts the global economy in the post-crisis period.
“At the peak of the crisis and during its immediate aftermath, unconventional monetary policy measures were designed and implemented by the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world,” Yellen said. “The post-crisis period has offered policy makers an opportunity to assess a range of novel policy and operational issues associated with the conduct of monetary policy and the effectiveness of different policy options.”
Minutes later, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond president Jeffrey Lacker noted in a speech before The Cato Institute's 33rd Annual Monetary Policy Conference that monetary policy determines the "long-run path" of price levels, a notion he said has remained "essentially unchanged since the Great Recession." Lacker has dissented in each of the last two FOMC's meetings, voting each time for a quarter-point rate hike. Earlier at the conference, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard reiterated prior views that the FOMC's unemployment and inflation goals have been met, providing "no reason to hold rates" at near-zero levels.
A stronger dollar remains a headwind to the U.S. economy, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer said Thursday, noting accommodative monetary policy helped the economy withstand the impact.
"While the dollar's appreciation and foreign weakness have been a sizable shock, the U.S. economy appears to be weathering them reasonably well, notwithstanding their large effects on certain sectors of the economy heavily exposed to international trade," Fischer said in remarks prepared for a conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Board.
"Monetary policy has played a key role in achieving these outcomes through deferring liftoff relative to what was expected a little over a year ago," he added.
Earlier in the day, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending November 7 was unchanged from a week earlier at 276,000. Analysts had expected jobless claims to fall by 6,000 to 270,000.
The greenback remained broadly supported as last week's strong U.S. employment data paved the way for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its December meeting.