The yen declined on Friday as investors digested comments from Federal Reserve officials for hints at prospects of a rate hike next month.
USD/JPY was up 0.11% to trade at 122.72, while AUD/USD slipped 0.04% to settle at 0.7124.
In Japan, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry reported that industrial production rose to a seasonally adjusted 1.1%, from 1.0% in the preceding month. Analysts had expected industrial production to rise 1.0% last month.
In a separate report, METI said that Japanese tertiary industry activity index fell to a seasonally adjusted -0.4%, from 0.2% in the preceding month whose figure was revised up from 0.1%. Analysts had expected Japanese tertiary industry activity index to rise 0.2% last month.
Overnight, the dollar slashed gains against the other major currencies on Thursday, but still remained near a seven-month peak after an economic report and as Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen declined to comment on future monetary policy steps.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Labor said the number of individuals filing for initial jobless benefits in the week ending November 7 was unchanged from a week earlier at 276,000. Economists had expected jobless claims to fall by 6,000 to 270,000.
On Thursday, several monetary officials from the Federal Open
Market Committee, including Yellen and vice chairman Stanley Fischer
were scheduled to make public remarks ahead of its highly anticipated
meeting next month on December 15-16. In welcoming remarks at the Fed's
conference on Monetary Policy Implementation and Transmission in the
Post-Crisis, Yellen omitted to address the FOMC's near-term outlook
regarding a potential rate increase or the health of the U.S. economy.
Yellen just noted how important it is to assess how monetary policy impacts the global economy in the post-crisis period.
Some time later, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond president Jeffrey
Lacker noted in a speech before The Cato Institute's 33rd Annual
Monetary Policy Conference that monetary policy sets the "long-run
path" of price levels, a notion he said has remained "essentially
unchanged since the Great Recession." In each of
the last two FOMC's meetings, Lacker voted for a quarter-point rate
hike.
Earlier at the conference, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard repeated prior views that the FOMC's unemployment and inflation targets have been met, providing "no reason to hold rates" at near-zero levels.
Federal Reserve Vice Chair Stanley Fischer said Thursday that a stronger dollar remains a headwind to the U.S. economy, as he noted that accommodative monetary policy helped the economy stand the influence.
"While the dollar's appreciation and foreign weakness have been a sizable shock, the U.S. economy appears to be weathering them reasonably well, notwithstanding their large effects on certain sectors of the economy heavily exposed to international trade."
"Monetary policy has played a key role in achieving these outcomes through deferring liftoff relative to what was expected a little over a year ago," he added.
