Pound gains on USD, yen

Story link: Pound gains on USD, yen

The US dollar and the Japanese yen declined and the pound saw gains Monday after the euro was helped by an announcement from Barclays Bank (LSE: BARC; NYSE: BCS; TYO: 8642) that it will not need to raise more capital.

The UK-based bank said its acquisitions from Lehman Brothers Holdings, which went bankrupt last year, helped raise record revenue.

Barclays’ announcement hurt the yen as it raised sentiment enough to send some investors in search of risky currencies deals, which are often funded with the low-yielding Japanese currency.

The US dollar was helped by new data from the National Association of Realtors which showed that existing homes sales in the United States rose by 6.5 percent in December, rather than dropping as had been predicted.

Home sales were boosted by a 15.3 percent decline in the median price of a home to $175,400, the biggest year-on-year drop in 40 years.

The price of a home in the Western US dropped even more, falling 31.5 percent from the previous year.

Even with the December increase, however, existing home sales for 2008 dropped 13 percent to 4.9 million homes sold in the year.

In late morning trade in New York, the yen traded at ¥89.375 to the greenback, at ¥117.3516 to the euro, and at ¥124.3392 to the pound.

At the same time, the pound traded lower at 94.38p to the euro but was up against the US currency as the dollar traded at $1.3912 to the pound and it took $1.313 to buy a euro.