The U.S. Dollar entered the new week reporting massive gains against the Japanese Yen. The day marks another rally for the greenback, which continues its week-long rebound from its lows following hawkish comments from the Federal Reserve officials.

Data point to economic recovery

A slew of data released in the U.S. has also backed the case for a sooner interest rate hike than anticipated by the markets. Several key sets of date to be released this week will further indicate the direction of the monetary tightening policy to be adopted by the Fed. Non-farm payrolls, manufacturing PMI, core personal consumption expenditure price (PCE) index and Chicago purchasing management index are among the significant data to be released this week.

Meanwhile, an upward revision to U.S. fourth-quarter growth has further sparked the expectations of an early rate hike. The Commerce Department released a report where it had revised its annualised fourth quarter gross domestic product to 1.4% from 1%.  Such data made the dollar gain ground against Yen as it surged 0.28% to 113.43.

Yen trade sloppy ahead of key numbers

The trading in Yen was mostly muted ahead of the release of jobs and spending data in Japan this week. Japan’s household spending is to come on Tuesday, which has witnessed a fall of 1.5% year-on-year so far. Alongside this, the unemployment data and retail sales data are awaited. The market is projecting the job rate to hold steady at 3.2% while there is an expectation of 1.7% gain in retail sales.

However, the greenback traded lower against the Euro and the Sterling on a thinly traded day. EUR/USD gained 0.04% to 1.1169 against the greenback while Sterling moved up by 0.33% to 1.4172. Inflation data in the euro zone will be of much significance to the market participants on Wednesday.

The U.S. Dollar Index surged 0.06% to $96.23 against the major currencies during the Asian trade.