In advance of the Christmas holiday and the last day of Forex trading for the week, the US Dollar was mixed in extremely light trading on Thursday. 

The first early part of the FX trading session showed the US Dollar falling,  after the worse than expected housing data were releases.

However, data released late in Thursday’s session showed an increase in durable good orders, as well as a larger decrease in first time unemployment filers than analysts had predicted, caused the USD to maintain its losses. 

What happened Thursday is not indicative of market sentiment as most of the professional traders and institutions took the day off, leaving the less experienced and opportunistic day-traders to control the market.

JPY - The JPY gained across the board on Thursday, even as a new report showed that government scandal and mistrust in the new prime minister’s recovery plan was released. 

Thursday morning saw two trusted aides of the newly elected leader indicted on fraud and funding irregularities related to the recent election.  In the five months since August, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has seen his approval rating fall from around 75% to 45%, the largest drop in confidence in the shortest time for any leader.  Much of the negativity stems more from skepticism about plans to reorganize the country’s economic machine, an adventurous task not accomplished by any government in the past fifteen years – the Prime Minister’s party was the first to oust the long-standing conservatives but is seen as to socially liberal to cut spending.  IN any event, the indictments did not affect the Yen in the shortened, lightly traded session.

At the close, the Yen was up .32% against the Euro to 131.26, up 1% to the British Pound Sterling to 145.54, up .18% versus the Australian Dollar to 80.67 and up .09% to the Swiss Fran to close the session off at 88.0