Dollar on record high against the euro, slid against USD
The Australian dollar closed a record high against the euro but fell against the U.S. greenbuck as investors shied away from high yielding assets on the back the Greece sovereign debt issue woes and the comment issued by Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Steven that interest rates would stay at the moment.
The Australian dollar traded at 92.56 U.S. cents at midday, down from the 92.83 U.S. cents at Thursday close. It was also buying 86.45 yen, 60.3 pence and 69.98 euro cents - after hitting a record high of 70.02 euro cents
The local unit traded between 92.77 and 92.37 US cents from 7am Friday. The local unit was affected by concerns brought by decisions of major investors to offload high yielding assets due to the lingering Greece financial crisis.
Sara Hoenig, associate economist at Commonwealth Bank commented, ''We're marginally lower from where we opened. We had a stronger U.S. dollar and weaker equity markets on (renewed) fears for Greece.''
Fears that the end of the Greece debt default crisis is not yet on sight and its potential effect on the EU sent a shockwave of fears across the global financial markets in the past months.
The spread or interest rate gap, between Greek 10-year bonds and German ones - considered a benchmark of stability - jump to an all-time high of 5.8 percentage points before slowly regaining.
Concerns that Greece would continue to default on its bet is resulting to high rates.