FOREX-Dollar steady against most majors in holiday-lulled trading

* Australian dollar near five-month high
* Sterling snaps 5-day losing streak

(Updates to U.S. afternoon trading)
By Saqib Iqbal Ahmed
NEW YORK, Dec 24 (Reuters) - The dollar was little-changed
against the euro in holiday-thinned trading on Tuesday, ahead of
the Christmas holiday, while the British pound snapped a
five-day streak of losses against the U.S. currency.
Against the dollar, the euro was 0.02% lower.
"The holiday has already shut several markets, and those
that are open are lightly traded," Marc Chandler, chief market
strategist at Bannockburn Global Forex in New York, said in a
note.
"The U.S. dollar is showing a firmer profile against most of
the major currencies," Chandler said.
The dollar index .DXY , which measures the greenback
against six other major currencies, was up 0.02% at 97.674.
The dollar, up about 1.6% for the year as measured by the
dollar index, has broadly benefited during bouts of risk
aversion and when markets have rallied, because the U.S. economy
is outperforming other parts of the world.
However, a recent cooling of trade-related tensions between
the United States and China, following an interim trade
agreement earlier this month, has led investors to favor
trade-sensitive currencies over the greenback.
The Australian dollar, unchanged on the day against the
dollar, remained close to a five-month high against the
greenback. AUD=
The Aussie tends to do well when optimism grows over global
trade and China's economy.
China's yuan edged slightly higher on the day after Premier
Li Keqiang said the government was considering more measures to
lower corporate financing costs and hinted at "targeted" cuts in
banks' reserve requirement ratio. The offshore yuan
last traded at 7.0026 CNH= .
The Canadian dollar CAD= was trading 0.13% lower against
the greenback at 1.316 to the U.S. dollar, or 75.96 U.S. cents,
a day after data showed Canada's economy unexpectedly shrank by
0.1% in October. Sterling, which has fallen against the dollar for five
straight days, as its post-election rally floundered amid
growing anxiety around the possibility of a hard and chaotic
Brexit in the coming months, steadied on Tuesday.
Sterling was up 0.2% at $1.2959. The pound, which surged
after Boris Johnson's Conservative Party won a majority in the
UK general election on Dec. 12, has given up all those gains and
some more.
"We suspect that the bulls have pared their positions amid
the buy the rumor sell the fact activity since the election,"
Bannockburn's Chandler said.

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Graphic: World FX rates in 2019 http://tmsnrt.rs/2egbfVh
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