Investing.com -- EUR/USD extended its rally, one day after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady for a third straight meeting, as the dollar fell sharply against the yen on Thursday when the Bank of Japan surprisingly followed suit.
The currency pair traded in a broad range between 1.1296 and 1.1368, before settling at 1.1355, up 0.0029 or 0.26% on the session. With the slight gains, the euro closed higher against the dollar for a fourth consecutive session and for the seventh time over the last 10 trading days. Over the last month of trading, the euro is up by more than 1.5% against its American counterpart.
EUR/USD likely gained support at 1.0538, the low from December 3 and was met with resistance at 1.1496, the high from Oct. 15.
In overnight trading, the BOJ rattled global foreign exchange markets with a shocking decision to hold its deposit rate at its current rate of Negative 0.1%. Many analysts expected the Japanese Central Bank to approve a wide set of easing measures to bolster flagging economic growth. Despite leaving rates unchanged for the time being, BOJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda emphasized that the bank will do "whatever it takes," in future meetings to help achieve its 2% inflation objective over the next two years.
Although the BOJ maintained its money market operations at its current increases of 80 trillion yen per year, Kuroda indicated that the central bank could remain open to raising the total in subsequent meetings.
The BOJ reiterated that it will purchase exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and Japanese real estate investment trusts (J-REITs) at an annual increasing rate of roughly 3.3 trillion yen and about 90 billion yen, respectively. In addition, the Japanese Central Bank said it will continue to purchase corporate bonds at its current level of 3.2 trillion yen.
As a result, the yen surged more than 3% against the dollar to an intraday high of ¥107.88, enjoying its strongest one-day move in seven years.
It came one day after the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) completed its third meeting of 2016 by leaving its benchmark Federal Funds Rate at a target range between 0.25 and 0.50%. In December, the FOMC ended a seven-year zero interest rate policy by hiking the Fed Funds Rate 25 basis points. The move at the end of last year marked the first rate hike by the Fed in nearly a decade.
Before the FOMC meets again in June, the Committee said it will assess economic conditions, measures of labor market conditions, indications of inflationary pressures and expectations, as well as readings on financial and international developments as it determines the size of future adjustments to the Federal Funds Rate. Notably, the FOMC did not rule out a June rate hike in Wednesday's statement.On Thursday, the CME Group's (NASDAQ:CME) FedWatch tool lowered the probability of a June rate hike to 15.0% from 100% during the previous session. The CME Group now expects a 38.8% chance that the Fed will wait until September before raising rates again, up from 30% on Wednesday.
Any rate hikes by the Fed this year are viewed as bullish for the dollar, as investors pile into the greenback in order to capitalize on higher yields.
The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the strength of the greenback versus a basket of six other major currencies, fell more than 0.55% to an intraday low of 93.66 before settling at 93.73. Earlier on Thursday, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) said U.S. GDP increased by 0.5% in the first quarter, slightly below consensus forecasts of 0.7%. The dollar index remains near eight-month lows.