Aussie rises on back of Yen THE Australian dollar continued its move higher after a rally in the yen helped push the US dollar lower. At 1700 AEDT, the local currency was trading at 103.64 US cents, up from 103.50 cents on Thursday. Westpac chief currency strategist Robert Rennie said the Australian dollar traded in a narrow range on Friday but remained well supported. "We've spent the last two or three trading sessions looking like we're set to trade a bit higher," he said. He said the main focus for currency markets was the Japanese yen, which had moved higher and helped push the US dollar lower, ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Moscow. "It's more about the yen and that is where the interest is at," Mr Rennie said. The yen has fallen sharply in value in recent months following monetary easing by the Bank of Japan, and markets expect the lower value of yen to be the subject of criticism at the G20 meeting. Mr Rennie said the Australian dollar was likely to continue to move higher early next week. "I wouldn't be surprised to see us pushing a bit higher next week, towards 104.50 US cents," he said. At 1700 AEDT, the Australian dollar was at 95.88 Japanese yen, down from 96.83 yen on Thursday, and 77.60 euro cents, up from 77.05 euro cents. Meanwhile, Australian bond futures prices moved higher. ANZ head of interest rate research Tony Morriss said bond futures prices moved higher overnight on Thursday amid weakness in European stock markets and disappointing economic data from the euro zone. "We have seen a little bit of support come back into bond markets over the last day," he said. Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said on Thursday the euro zone economy shrank by 0.6 per cent in the final three months of 2012. Mr Morriss said solid demand for an auction of Australian government debt on Friday also helped boost demand for bond futures. The Australian Office of Financial Management received bids totalling $3.337 billion for $600 million worth of October 2015 Treasury bonds. "We had a bond tender here and they saw a particularly strong bid-cover so that suggests that this recent move higher in yield has made our bonds more attractive for investors," Mr Morriss said. At 1630 AEDT, the March 10-year bond futures contract was trading at 96.500 (implying a yield of 3.500 per cent), up from 96.430 (3.570 per cent) on Thursday. The March three-year bond futures contract was at 97.140 (2.860 per cent), up from 97.090 (2.910 per cent).