By Cornelius Luca
New York, May 14 (BridgeNews) - The dollar extended its gains versus its major counterparts ahead of the Federal Reserve's expected rate cuts during its FOMC meeting Tuesday. The euro fell to a 26-day low of 87.30 cents to the dollar and the dollar advanced to a 13-day high of 123.16 yen. Given the strong retail sales on Friday, some analysts are pondering whether the Fed can still trim rates by 50 basis points, as generally forecast.
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Dollar/Swiss franc climbed to a 26-day high of 1.7554, sterling/dollar slipped within Friday's range, while dollar/Canada advanced to a 25-day high of 1.5543. Monday's event agenda includes March business inventories and April industrial production and capacity utilization.
With both euro/dollar and dollar/yen approaching key levels and with the Fed's decision on interest rates around the corner, trading should be dominated by light flows. Still, there is an overall bullish bias for the dollar in the near term.
Key levels to watch are 0.8695 in euro/dollar and 124.35 in dollar/yen.

Current Previous Change Global Global
NY open NY close low high

USD/JPY 122.91 122.51 0.40 122.35 123.16
EUR/USD 0.8747 0.8756 -0.0009 0.8730 0.8770
EUR/JPY 107.52 107.28 0.24 107.11 107.70
GBP/USD 1.4172 1.4188 -0.0016 1.4162 1.4192
USD/CHF 1.7521 1.7515 0.0006 1.7505 1.7554
USD/CAD 1.5532 1.5497 0.0035 1.5485 1.5543
AUD/USD 0.5174 0.5213 -0.0039 0.5160 0.5215
NZD/USD 0.4182 0.4214 -0.0032 0.4181 0.4224
SP.1 1248.00 -3.80 1246.00 1254.00
ND.1 1818.00 -16.50 1791.00 1849.50