* Euro dips vs yen on Japan exporter selling
* Kiwi down, hurt by RBNZ statement on future hikes
* Dollar index dips, support seen at 81.44
By Masayuki Kitano
TOKYO, July 29 (Reuters) - The euro dipped against the yen on
Thursday, pulling away from a recent two-month high on selling by
Japanese exporters, while the kiwi struggled after New Zealand's
central bank raised interest rates but warned further hikes could
be more gradual.
The New Zealand dollar <NZD=D4> fell sharply after the
Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) signalled the pace of further
interest rate hikes would be less than earlier thought. The kiwi
fell to a low near $0.7205, from about $0.7280 before the
announcement.
After staging a mild recovery, the New Zealand dollar was up
0.5 percent from late U.S. trading on Wednesday at $0.7244.
[].
"The kiwi was dented by dovish comments from New Zealand's
central bank, that came a day after data showed inflation has
cooled in Australia," said Hideki Amikura, deputy general manager
of forex trading at Nomura Trust and Banking.
Australian inflation data released on Wednesday proved far
more tame than expected, ruling out the need for an interest rate
rise possibly for the rest of the year. []
The euro edged up 0.2 percent against the dollar to $1.3014
<EUR=>, hovering near its 11-week high of $1.3047 hit on trading
platform EBS earlier this week.
But the euro dipped 0.2 percent against the yen to 113.40 yen
<EURJPY=R>, pulling away from its highest in more than two months
of 114.74 yen struck on trading platform EBS on Wednesday.
A trader for a Japanese bank cited euro-selling by Japanese
exporters before the month-end, adding that more offers were
likely to emerge if the euro rebounds and rises towards 115 yen.
"A lot of exporters are waiting at levels above 115 yen," the
trader said.
The dollar slipped 0.3 percent against the yen to 87.19
<JPY=>, extending losses after data on Wednesday showed new U.S.
durable goods orders unexpectedly fell for a second straight
month in June.
Still, the core measure of orders excluding aircraft and
defence rose 0.6 percent in June, on top of an upwardly revised
4.6 percent jump in May, suggesting activity was not nearly as
soft as the headline number suggested. []
The dollar is likely to find support against the yen at
levels around 86.80 yen, near the dollar's intraday low hit on
Monday and Tuesday, said Teppei Ino, a technical analyst at Bank
of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.
"There aren't strong reasons to bid up the yen beyond those
levels at the moment, especially ahead of key U.S. data on
Friday," Ino said. U.S. second-quarter gross domestic product
data is due out on Friday.
A recent string of lacklustre U.S. economic data has weighed
on the greenback and led investors to cut short positions in the
euro.
The single currency touched an 11-week high against the
dollar earlier this week, helped by strong bank earnings and
gains in European equities, following last week's favourable
results of regulatory stress tests.
The dollar index <.DXY> was down 0.3 percent at 81.956, with
near-term support around 81.44, a 50 percent retracement of the
index's move from a low of 74.17 in November 2009 to a high near
88.71 in June.
The U.S. Federal Reserve's Beige Book on Wednesday pointed to
a less-than-booming recovery with sluggish housing markets and
sales of costly items like new cars weakening. []
(Additional reporting by Anirban Nag in Sydney and Hideyuki Sano
and Rika Otsuka in Tokyo; Editing by Joseph Radford)
