Major currencies traded in narrow ranges as an absence of economic news kept investors on the sidelines until later this week, when minutes to the Federal Reserve's last rate-setting meeting will take the spotlight. The euro gained a brief fillip during the morning after Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), supported expectations that the Bank is not about to cut interest rates any time soon. The ECB chief told BBC Radio that central banks must prevent higher inflation from sparking more generous pay deals, which could cause an inflationary spiral and derail growth in the longer term. The single currency has been underpinned of late by the ECB's hawkish rhetoric, pushing the dollar lower with the U.S. currency also suffering from soft economic data and soaring oil. "Rising rate expectations in Europe, higher oil prices and weak US consumer confidence have contributed to recent dollar weakness, in our view," said Benedikt Germanier at UBS. Data tomorrow could influence the market's thinking further on the future path of interest rates in the euro zone and U.S. Germany's ZEW research institute is expected to say its economic expectations index improved slightly to -38.0 in May, following a plunge of 8.7 points to -40.7 last month. Meanwhile, wholesale prices in the US are set to be benign, up 0.4 pct in April following a 1.1 pct increase in the previous month. The core rate should rise by 0.2 percent, the same as in March. The major piece of news out of the U.S. comes on Wednesday, when the Federal Reserve releases the minutes of its April 30 meeting. At that meeting policymakers cut key interest rates by 25 basis points, its smallest reduction this year, and signalled the end of a rate-cutting cycle that has brought the benchmark Fed Funds Rate to 2.00 percent from 5.25 percent in the autumn.