The Labor Department reported initial jobless claims for the week ended May 17 came in at their lowest level since the first week of April, dropping by 9,000 to 365,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.

That was apparently enough for traders to ignore more dismal housing data. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said home prices fell a seasonally adjusted 1.7% in the first three months of 2008, marking the largest quarterly price decline on record.

Analysts said the market is also concluding that not only will the Fed not lower rates at its June meeting, but that it will be forced to begin raising them again, perhaps as early as September.

But there wasn’t a large amount of optimism about the buck’s future. “The U.S. dollar’s tone is fragile and with oil prices showing little pullback, the budding dollar-bullish sentiment has been beaten back again,” wrote currency strategists at Brown Brothers Harriman.

Source: Dollar Manages a Rally vs Euro