New York, Feb 18 (IANS) The US dollar ended higher against most major currencies as investors were still digesting the Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's remarks and a batch of economic data earlier this week.
In late New York trading on Friday, the euro fell to $1.0612 from $1.0669 in the previous session, and the British pound declined to $1.2429 from $1.2490 in the previous session, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Australian dollar dropped to $0.7663 from $0.7695.
The US dollar bought 112.88 Japanese yen, lower than 113.23 yen of the previous session.
The US dollar rose to 1.0026 Swiss francs from 0.9978 Swiss francs, and it edged up to 1.3103 Canadian dollars from 1.3063 Canadian dollars.
In her testimony before Congress on Tuesday and Wednesday, Yellen gave an upbeat assessment of the economy, saying that the economy has continued to make progress toward the maximum employment and price stability objectives. She also implied a faster pace of interest rate hikes in the future.
Besides Yellen's relatively hawkish comments, the greenback was also supported by a series of upbeat US economic data.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for all urban consumers increased 0.6 per cent in January, beating market consensus of 0.3 per cent. Meanwhile, U.S. retail and food services sales for January came in at $472.1 billion, an increase of 0.4 per cent from the previous month and above market estimates.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, was up 0.44 per cent at 100.880 in late trading on Friday.
(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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