By Cornelius Luca
New York, April 20 (BridgeNews) - The greenback trimmed losses versus the major European currencies and advanced against the Japanese yen mostly on profit taking before the weekend. The dollar's rebound from a five-week low of 120.90 yen was linked to Japan's Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's comments that seemed to indicate he favored a trading range of 120 to 125.
* * * Euro/dollar and sterling/dollar gave up most of their profits after climbing to 11-day highs of 0.9022 and 1.4481, respectively, while dollar/Swiss franc replicated with a bounce from an 11-day low of 1.6977.
Dollar/Canada remains weak after extending Thursday's losses on long liquidation to a new five-week low of 1.5435. The pair was neutral to the Canadian CPI data, which rose 0.3% on the month in March and was up 2.5% from a year earlier. The core rate rose 0.1% on the month and 1.7% from a year earlier.
In an exclusive interview with CNBC, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill repeated his strong dollar mantra, but was refused to enter in a debate about what Europe should or should not do.
The U.S. traders will likely continue to buy dollars ahead of the weekend.