Dollar rises against euro on Portugal bank fears

 The U.S. dollar recovered against most major currencies Thursday and snapped a three-day drop versus the euro after worries over a Portuguese bank which reported payment difficulties spread in the euro zone.
Market fears over Banco Espirito Santo, a leading lender in Portugal, hurt bond markets in peripheral eurozone countries and dragged down the euro.
The greenback was also boosted by a pair of positive U.S. economic data which showed that the world's largest economy remained on track of recovery.
In the week ending July 5, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 304,000, a more-than-expected decrease of 11,000 from the previous week, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday.
Meanwhile, U.S. wholesale inventories, a key component of gross domestic product (GDP) changes, rose 0.5 percent in May from April, slightly lower than market consensus, but still signaling a pickup in momentum for the U.S. economy in the second quarter of this year.
In the previous session, the dollar weakened as investors saw no indications of raising interest rates from Federal Reserve's minutes of its latest policy meeting.
The minutes said that the final asset-purchases reduction would occur following the October meeting if the economy progresses as it expects, but revealed no clue about when the Fed would begin hiking interest rates for the first time.
In late New York trading, the euro fell to 1.3603 dollars from 1.3645 dollars of the previous session, and the British pound decreased to 1.7143 dollars from 1.7156 dollars. The Australian dollar slipped to 0.9394 dollars from 0.9419 dollars.
The dollar bought 101.27 Japanese yen, lower than 101.57 yen of the previous session. The dollar went up to 0.8926 Swiss francs from 0.8908 Swiss francs, and it moved up to 1.0650 Canadian dollars from 1.0648 Canadian dollars.