FX round-up: Euro drops sharply as Greek worries abate

The single currency dropped on Tuesday despite renewed short-­term optimism surrounding the situation in Greece, even as European bonds and equities logged another day of gains.

On Monday evening European authorities gave their endorsement to Greece's latest economic proposals, signaling they marked a good starting point on which to build upon.

As the risk of capital controls and political uncertainty in the Mediterranean country faded, so too investors took once again to selling euros to finance purchases in higher yielding assets in other currencies.

The euro/dollar ended the day 1.53% lower reaching 1.1173.

Some market chatter also highlighted remarks from US Federal Reserve Board governor Jerome Powell late in the afternoon as another factor that boosted the dollar.

Powell said the central bank might raise rates twice over the remainder of 2015, but cautioned the chances of the correct conditions being in place by then were still only 50­-50.

Be that as it may, the latest data on orders for US durable goods for May revealed business investment remained lacklustre in the second quarter.

Most of the weakness was accounted for by a sharp drop in the volatile commercial aircraft component of the report.

However, downward revisions to figures for April contained in the same report led Barclays to revise its tracking estimate for second quarter GDP in the US by three tenths of a percentage point, to 3.1%.

Cable finished the day down by 0.61 % at 1.5733, while dollar/yen advanced 0.42% to 123.91 by the end of trading.

The Eurozone's composite purchasing managers' index for manufacturing and services hit a four- year high in June, preliminary results from a survey carried out by Markit showed.