By Sarah Turner, MarketWatch
SYDNEY (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. dollar weakened a touch against the euro and the yen on Thursday, with data on the U.S. housing market on tap.
Data on U.S. housing starts is due later in the trading day.
BNP Paribas currency strategists said that they’re expecting housing starts to show a 6% rebound month-on-month in November to 550,000 annualized units.
October’s data showed a 11.7% drop in housing starts to 519,000 on an annualized basis, they noted, which was a much bigger drop than implied by a drop in hours worked.
“Therefore, in November, we expect starts to rebound from October’s levels,” they said.
Against its Japanese counterpart, the dollar (USDYEN 84.0300, -0.1900, -0.2256%) traded at 84.07 yen, just down from ¥84.32 late Thursday.
The euro (EURUSD 1.3226, +0.0018, +0.1363%) traded at $1.3250, up from $1.3229 in late North American trading.
The dollar index (DXY 80.13, -0.13, -0.16%) , a measure of the greenback’s performance against a basket of six other currencies, slipped slightly to 80.061, from 80.190 in late North American trading.
