LONDON (AFX) - The euro was little changed in early morning trade with few leads to trade on ahead of the second part of Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan's congressional testimony this afternoon, dealers said.
At the most recent semi-annual testimony to Congress last week, Greenspan's downbeat assessment of the US economy put the dollar under pressure.
"There is no story for the euro today. It is drifting around in range-trading," Jeremy Hawkins, chief economist Europe at Bank of America said.
"Its failure to break through on the upside disappointed some but it also seems to be supported so it has ended up just trading in the 0.8730-0.8650 usd range," he added.
Michael Klawitter, a currency strategist at West LB said: "Given that euro-dollar did surprisingly well despite the weak German Ifo index, today's risks are slightly to the upside."
Economists said that Greenspan's testimony is unlikely to have much impact on the market as it is expected that he will largely just repeat what he said last week.
"Overall, the US economic picture looks better than it did last week so he may be less downbeat," Hawkins said.
Dealers said this morning's French economic data failed to impact on the market despite being better than expected.
French household consumption of manufactured goods rose 1.5 pct in June and June final CPI was unchanged on the month in line with provisional estimates.
"At this stage the market is concentrating on USD numbers first and everything else second," Hawkins said.
Sterling was slightly lower in early trade. "There is talk in the Independent (a national newspaper) that EMU is off the agenda this parliament and talk that a tax treaty with the US will be implemented that abolishes withholding tax. Both should have been sterling positive but we are in summer trading and one big trade can move prices either way," Hawkins at Bank of America said.