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Dollar lower against yen, euro in Singapore

SINGAPORE: The US dollar was lower against the yen and euro in Singapore trade Monday, due to the sell off in US stock markets last week, dealers said.

The dollar traded at 103.95 yen at 0530 GMT, from 105.87 yen last Friday. It opened at 104.77 yen, according to rates from Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP).

The euro was trading at 0.9450 dollars, up from 0.9557 dollars, last Friday, the euro opened at 0.9652 dollars.

The British pound was higher at 1.5905 dollars, from 1.5845 dollars. It opened at 1.5845 dollars.

"People continued to sell the dollar across the board, and this can be attributed to the sell of in US stockmarkets last week," said a dealer with the French bank.

On Friday, the technology-heavy Nasdaq and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell suffered their worst single-day point declines.

This triggered selling when Asian markets opened Monday, led by Japan, where the key Nikkei-225 index suffered its third worst point loss ever, slumping as much as 1,750.79 points or 8.6 percent to 18,683.89 during the day.

"But even though the Nikkei's down, the impact on the yen is not so much because a lot of Japanese companies are holding US stocks and are selling the dollar," said the dealer with BNP.

ABN AMRO Bank in Singapore said that market talk that foreign institutional investors were buying Japanese government bonds as a safe haven from the global stock market turmoil added to the bullishness on the yen.ÑAFP