Investing.com - The yen held slightly weaker in Asia on Friday in a light regional data day with markets broadly assessing continued easy monetary conditions globally until the end of the year, including the Federal Reserve.
USD/JPY changed hands at 100.85, up 0.10%, while AUD/USD traded at 0.7650, up 0.09%.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was last quoted at 95.31.
Overnight, the dollar extended losses against the other major currencies on Thursday, as the Federal Reserve’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged at the conclusion of its policy meeting on Wednesday continued to dampen demand for the greenback.
In addition, the Fed cut the number of rate increases it expects this year to one from two and projected a less aggressive rise in interest rates next year and in 2018. Investing.com's Fed Rate Monitor Tool shows investors see a 10.3 chance for a rate hike in November, rising to just above 57% by December.
However, the U.S. central bank signaled that it could tighten monetary policy before the end of the year if the job market continued to improve.
Markets shrugged off a report by the U.S. Department of Labor showing that initial jobless claims in the week ending September 17 decreased by 8,000 to 252,000 from the previous week’s total of 260,000. This was its lowest level since July.
Analysts had expected jobless claims to rise by 2,000 to 262,000 last week.
A separate report showed that U.S. existing home sales decreased by 0.9% in August to 5.33 million units from the 5.38 million units in July. The consensus forecast was for a 1.1% advance to 5.45 million units.
Markets were still digesting the Bank of Japan’s decision to refrain from cutting interest rates further into negative territory or expanding its asset purchase program on Wednesday, instead switching to targeting interest rates as a way to reach its inflation target.