(Reuters) – Apple Inc’s market value climbed past $623 billion on Monday, surpassing the record set by Microsoft Corp during the heyday of technology stocks in 1999.

Apple shares rose 2.6 percent, bringing its gains this month to almost 9 percent as Wall Street bets on the September 12 rollout of the latest version of the iPhone, the device that revolutionized the mobile industry.

Microsoft, however, retains the title of history’s most valuable company if its 1999 peak value of about $621 billion were to be adjusted for inflation.

Apple’s stock usually rallies in the run-up to major product launches, among the most heavily watched events on the annual tech calendar. The iPhone is the company’s biggest product, yielding half or more of its sales.

Sources have said the company will take the wraps off a larger version of its iPhone on September 12. Some analysts also think it intends to announce a smaller iPad to safeguard its market share, as rivals from Google Inc to Amazon.com Inc begin selling cheaper, seven-inch tablets.

But Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi warned that questions remain about the availability of components for both the iPhone and the iPad, which in the past has constrained Apple’s product shipments.

“A key question for the launch will be Apple’s expected rollout schedule,” the analyst wrote on Monday. “Apple’s intention is to continue to ramp offerings as quickly as possible, but the company’s ability to do so remains a key near-term question.”

Apple’s shares have risen 64 percent in 2012. On Monday, they closed at a session high of $665.15, conferring on the Silicon Valley giant a capitalization of $623.5 billion, exceeding Microsoft’s 1999 value of $620.8 billion, according to data provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices.

But Microsoft’s value would rise to $853.7 billion after adjusting for rising prices, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation-calculator. (here)

POLAR OPPOSITES

Apple overtook Exxon Mobil to reach the No. 1 spot by market capitalization last year. Monday’s move means it has now entered the record books as the biggest company ever, in terms of market value.

“Everyone loves a winner; if you play the quick trade be careful,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices in emailed comments. “If you are an investor, check the fundamentals and business plans, and avoid the hype in your decision.”

Apple climbed even as fellow technology heavyweight Facebook Inc plumbed new depths. The No. 1 social network slid to a record intraday low of $18.75 in the morning before bouncing back to close just above $20 after Capstone upgraded the company’s stock to buy from hold.

Facebook’s stock has gone south in the past month as investors worried about its ability to make revenue grow. Last week, some early investors were given the go-ahead to sell for the first time since Facebook’s May 18 IPO. Several similar lockups will expire through the end of the year.

Facebook rebounded above $20 in afternoon trade after Capstone’s upgrade, based on a combination of a more attractive valuation since its decline, and good long-term advertising prospects.

“It seems to be down around levels that people who didn’t like the deal thought it was really worth. And now it seems to have stabilized,” said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer, North Star Investment Management Corp in Chicago.

It may have “found a level which seems more of a better price for people valuing the company in terms of the future.”

(Writing by Edwin Chan; Editing by Kenneth Barry, Steve Orlofsky, David Gregorio; and Phil Berlowitz)

It may not sound as flashy as social media, but healthcare is becoming a new star in Silicon Valley. Driven by the promise of enormous payouts, entrepreneurs are using the latest technology and design to help save lives, and make money.

“It’s risky,” said Nate Gross, co-founder of San Francisco, California-based Rock Health, an incubator for healthcare startups. “You have a few more cards stacked up against you.” For example, Gross said, investors’ hesitancy is one of the setbacks. “It’s easier to understand a general tech product you can use than an app for cancer patients that you can’t use,” he said, adding that making healthcare look “sexy” is crucial for startups looking for funding.

Borna Safabakhsh is one entrepreneur who managed to do just that. His company, Agile Diagnosis, has reportedly raised more than $2 million in seed investment. The Palo Alto, California-based startup develops software that helps doctors to provide more accurate diagnosis. Safabakhsh, a recent graduate of Rock Health and another accelerator called Y-Combinator, said it’s extremely important to show the investors that you’re very familiar with your users.

“Understanding the context of a doctor is the hardest part,” Safabakhsh said, who has no academic background in medicine. “Whether it’s primary care setting, ER setting or urgent care setting, things are all different,” he said. For better feedback and interactions, Safabakhsh and his partners decided to work with medical students first, who, he said “have the greatest need and are willing to grow with” the company.

“To be able to provide informational value to an expert, we have to be much more sophisticated and mature than we are right now,” Safabakhsh said.

Even if your product is designed for consumers, not doctors, it could still be baffling to figure out the demand. M. Jackson Wilkinson is the co-founder of Kinsights, an online community that connects parents to answer each other’s health questions about their children. Although married to a pediatric doctor, Wilkinson doesn’t have kids.

“It helps living with a doctor,” Wilkinson said. “But there’s definitely a learning curve.” With previous experience in a consulting firm, Wilkinson said he knows how to “beef up” knowledge on different industries. But in healthcare, “the stakes are much higher.”

Except for the special needs of their users, healthcare entrepreneurs may have to study FDA regulations as well, something mass-audience developers don’t have to worry about.

For Geoff Clapp, the co-founder of Health Hero Network, a remote health monitoring business acquired by Bosch Healthcare five years ago, he had to study up on FDA regulations when developing his business. Once a product involves collecting health data for clinical analysis, the FDA requires “medical device” approval, which includes a process called 510(k) clearance and a privacy protection framework called HIPPA.

However, said Clapp, the regulators are still catching up with the latest technology that would, say, turn a smart phone into a blood pressure monitor, or a laptop into an X-ray scan reader. “It’s extremely cloudy right now,” Clapp said. “There’s really no case law yet.”

Despite the challenges of launching a product in a highly-regulated, and quickly evolving industry, Clapp believes more regulations are not necessarily anti-innovation. Instead, he said, clearly written rules may be helpful to improve product quality and keep the industry healthy. “You have a responsibility as a healthcare entrepreneur, “Clapp said. “When the iTunes store is full of snake oil … our market dies.”

In addition to learning hurdles and regulatory issues, competing with the big players in a lucrative market is also inevitable. “A lot of the powers are satisfied and satiated in their current revenue models,” Nate Gross of Rock Health said. “But the startups are here to disrupt that a lot of the times.”

But it’s tough to grab a share from the big companies, which are dominant in certain fields in healthcare, such as Electronical Medical Records, or EMR, where doctors store and manage patients’ digital health data.

“I see a whole bunch of people try to create stand-alone, personal health records, and they universally don’t do well,” said Dan Imler, a pediatric physician at Boston Medical Center who has been involved with several healthcare startups. “The more the technology is integrated into the workflow that a doctor is used to, the more likely it’s going to be accepted,” Imler said, adding that the big companies that create those EMR systems usually monopolize the market, leaving very little space for startups to squeeze in.

“It may sound cliché, but people want to create positive changes and build things that matter,” Borna Safabakhsh said, explaining why entrepreneurs entered this industry despite all the challenges.

And the payback, if succeeded, could be abundant too. According to the Center For Venture Research at University of New Hampshire, 30 and 19 percent of angel investment went to healthcare in 2010 and 2011 respectively, making it one of the top markets. In addition, a report released by the Centers for Medicare and MedicAid Services suggests that the national healthcare spending was nearly 18 percent of the country’s GDP in 2011 and is expected to grow by 4.2 percent this year.

“Social media is not one fifth of our economy,” Gross said. “The opportunity to make a difference in healthcare is tremendous.”

(The author is a Reuters contributor)

(Editing by John Peabody and Brian Tracey)

* Speculators bet on fall in S. Africa platinum output
    * Charts show platinum near overbought territory
    * Gold-platinum spread narrows after platinum rally

    By Frank Tang
    NEW YORK, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Platinum prices jumped nearly 2
percent on Monday, hitting a two-month high after deadly
violence at a mine in top producer South Africa triggered heavy
speculative buying on supply worries.
    Gold edged up 0.3 percent as inflow into the holdings of the
world's largest bullion-backed exchange-traded fund boosted
sentiment, and silver jumped 2 percent as platinum's rally
triggered short-covering.
    Investors bought platinum on worries that mines in South
Africa may produce less of the metal after 44 people were killed
during a strike at the Marikana mine owned by Lonmin 
, which accounts for 12 percent of global platinum
output. 
    The metal soared 7 percent in the past three sessions,
bringing its year-to-date gain to 7 percent, which means
platinum has outperformed gold, silver and copper so far in
2012. On technical charts, platinum's relative strength index is
at 69.8, just a hair below 70 which is seen as overbought.
    "Markets that are overbought can very easily get a lot more
overbought before they go down," said Adam Sarhan, CEO of Sarhan
Capital.
    Momentum buying should further underpin platinum after it
climbed to a two-month high and on its outperformance in the
metals complex, Sarhan said.
    Spot platinum rose 1.8 percent to $1,491.49 an ounce,
after hitting a high of $1,491.99 an ounce which marked its
highest since June 18.
    Last week, platinum posted a 5 percent rally, its biggest
weekly rise since February.
    Speculative fervor in platinum futures was evident even as
about a third of the workforce trickled back to work at Lonmin
on Monday. Analysts said the lost platinum production due to the
work stoppage at Lonmin has been negligible so far.
    Deutsche Bank said in a note that platinum market's expected
surplus for 2012 "could easily be wiped out" if labor violence
prolonged at Lonmin or if the unrest spread to other mines.
    Platinum's climb also benefited sister metal palladium
, which rose to an eight-week high at $608.50 an ounce in
early trade. It was up 0.2 percent at $603.60.

    PLATINUM DISCOUNT NARROWS
    Platinum's rise narrowed its discount to gold to less than
$130 an ounce from above $230 an ounce a week ago. 
    Platinum's rally has lifted gold and silver, which have been
recently trading in a range on speculation about whether the
Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank could launch more
gold-friendly monetary stimulus.
    Spot gold was down 0.3 percent at $1,620.99 an ounce
by 12:33 p.m. EDT (1633 GMT). 
    U.S. December gold futures for December delivery
climbed $4.30 an ounce to $1,623.70.
    Silver gained 2.2 percent at $28.64 an ounce.
    Buying by central banks, a major support to bullion prices
this year, was evident again last month, after Russia's central
bank said on Monday that it added another 18.7 tonnes of gold to
its reserves in July. 

 Prices at 12:33 p.m. EDT (1633 GMT)                           

                               LAST      NET    PCT     YTD
                                         CHG    CHG     CHG
 US gold                    1623.70     4.30   0.3%    3.6%
 US silver                   28.590    0.588   2.1%    2.4%
 US platinum                1497.00    23.90   1.6%    7.0%
 US palladium                606.80     1.70   0.3%   -7.5%

 Gold                       1620.99     5.40   0.3%    3.7%
 Silver                       28.64     0.61   2.2%    3.5%
 Platinum                   1491.49    26.99   1.8%    7.1%
 Palladium                   603.60     1.30   0.2%   -7.5%

 Gold Fix                   1615.00    -0.25   0.0%    2.6%
 Silver Fix                   28.10   -10.00  -0.4%   -0.3%
 Platinum Fix               1462.00     8.00   0.5%    5.9%
 Palladium Fix               598.00     3.00   0.5%   -6.0%

(Reuters) – Apple Inc became the most valuable public company of all-time on Monday when the combined value of its shares exceeded a previous record set by Microsoft.

Apple traded at $664.74 to give it a market value of $623.14 billion, above the record set by Microsoft of $620.58 billion set in 1999 at the height of the tech bubble, according to data provided by S&P Dow Jones Indices.

(Reporting By Edward Krudy; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

(CNN) — More details about the presumably imminent release of the next iPhone have emerging, if the typically anonymous spate of Internet sources are to be believed.

iMore, the first blog to publish reports that Apple plans to unveil its latest iteration of the smartphone on September 12, is now sayingthat pre-orders will begin that day and that the phone will be released nine days later, on September 21.

Both reports from the blog cite “sources that have provided iMore with accurate iPhone related launch dates in the past.” Several other blogs later cited their own sources saying the September 12 date is likely correct.

International launches in Europe and elsewhere will begin the first week of October, iMore said, possibly October 5.

Apple, to date, has made no official announcement.

iPhone speculation has focused on a handful of expected new features, including a slightly larger screen, a smaller dock connector and NFC technology that would make it easier for shoppers to make payments through their phones.

There are also varying opinions as to whether CEO Tim Cook might also unveil a smaller “iPad Mini” at the event. Once considered a no-go because of late CEO Steve Jobs’ statements that a smaller tablet wouldn’t work, observers increasingly think Apple could offer one to compete with emerging competitors like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7.

Current iPhone owners seem convinced that a rollout is imminent.

Last week, Ebay reported that it was seeing a surge in the number of people using the site for trade-in offers on their smartphones.

The site’s “Instant Sale” feature, which offers a pre-determined amount for electronics based on what someone else has offered, saw its number of phone trade-in offers jump 70% between July 30 and August 1. That’s when the September 12 release-date rumors began circulating.

On Tuesday, a working, 32GB iPhone 3GS got an instant $91 offer; a 16GB iPhone 4 would bring in $176; and the top-end iPhone 4S, the 64GB model, would get $371.

(Reuters) – Foxconn Technology Group is to set up an operation in Indonesia with plans to invest $5-10 billion over five to 10 years and starting with the assembly and production of 3 million handsets per year, Indonesia’s Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan told reporters on Tuesday.

The first investment will start in October and in phase two of the project, starting in July 2013, Foxconn will build a plant and increase output to 10 million units per year.

Foxconn, which is based in Taiwan, is the main supplier for Apple Inc and has been in talks with the Indonesian government for some time.

(Reporting by Yayat Supriatna; Writing by Matthew Bigg; Editing by Greg Mahlich)

(Reuters) – Retail sales rose in July for the first time in four months as demand climbed for goods ranging from cars to electronics, a sign that consumers could drive faster economic growth in the third quarter.

Sales rose 0.8 percent last month, the largest gain since February and well above analysts’ expectations, Commerce Department data showed on Tuesday.

A separate report showed U.S. producer prices increased in July at the fastest pace in five months even as energy prices fell.

The broad-based expansion in retail sales bolstered the view that the slowdown in economic growth during the second quarter will prove temporary.

“Here comes the U.S. consumer,” said Harm Bandholz, an economist at UniCredit in New York.

Consumer spending drives the U.S. economy, and the report could give some relief to President Barack Obama, whose November re-election bid against Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, has been imperiled by a weak recovery.

But after a dismal spring, summer has brought more reassuring signs for the economy.

Hiring accelerated in July despite an uptick in the jobless rate, and Tuesday’s data added to uncertainty that the Federal Reserve will implement a third round of bond-buying, or quantitative easing, to stimulate growth.

“Today’s retail sales data further reduces the likelihood of QE3 in September, but does not take it off the table,” said Michelle Meyer, an economist at Bank of America in New York.

Fed policymakers meet next on September 12-13.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected retail sales to rise 0.3 percent. U.S. stocks climbed on the data, as did yields on U.S. government debt. The dollar rose against the yen.

CAUTIOUS CONSUMERS

Pointing to a strong increase in consumer spending in July, the so-called core measure of retail sales – which excludes autos, gasoline and building materials – rose 0.9 percent. That was the biggest gain since January.

Stronger consumer spending would help corporations doing business in the United States. Home Depot Inc, the world’s largest home improvement chain, reported a quarterly profit that beat Wall Street views on Tuesday and raised its earnings outlook for the fiscal year.

Economic growth in the United States cooled to a 1.5 percent annual rate in the second quarter from a 2 percent pace in the first three months of the year, and economists are now banking on an acceleration.

In the retail report, the government said sales contracted more than previously thought in June, further darkening the view of the second quarter.

The Commerce Department said in another report that sales at all businesses slipped in June by the most since March 2009, which economists said should curb some enthusiasm over the jump in retail sales.

“Given that sales are only marginally higher since the start of the year, households clearly remain cautious,” said Amna Asaf, an economist with Capital Economics in Toronto.

And with good reason. Dark clouds continue to loom over the economic outlook.

The euro zone’s debt-ravaged economy shrank in the second quarter after flat-lining in the first, a report showed on Tuesday.

Europe’s travails have fueled economic uncertainty, and appear to be choking hiring in the United States.

U.S. small business sentiment fell for a third straight month in July as owners worried about sales revenue, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.

SOFTER ENERGY PRICES

By undercutting global growth, the debt crisis in the euro zone has also pushed oil prices lower since March.

While the Labor Department’s index of producer prices, which measures prices received by farms, factories and refineries, climbed 0.3 percent last month on higher costs for consumer goods and food, the gain was muted by a drop in energy prices.

Still, core inflation at the wholesale level accelerated in July. The core measure has held at higher levels even as a sharp drop in energy prices over the past year has pulled overall producer prices lower.

Some policymakers at the Fed worry that further moves to lower borrowing costs could fuel inflation, though the central bank has said it was ready to do more to help the economy if needed.

“This report suggests core inflation will persist despite price swings in food and energy,” said Cooper Howes, an economist at Barclays in New York.

(Additional reporting by Lucia Mutikani in Washington and Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfus and Wangfeng Zhou in New York; Editing by Neil Stempleman, Tim Ahmann and Leslie Adler)

(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and other officials won the dismissal of a shareholder lawsuit accusing them of tolerating poor mortgage practices and quitting a federal bailout program early to boost executive pay.

U.S. District Judge William Pauley in Manhattan said the shareholders failed to show there were “red flags” to put bank directors on notice of “broken controls” in Goldman’s mortgage servicing business, including that workers at its Litton unit may have been “robo-signing” documents.

Pauley also cited a similar lack of red flags to suggest directors knew Goldman was packaging troubled loans in residential mortgage-backed securities, including loans the bank sold “short” in a bet they would lose value.

The judge also said the plaintiffs did not show that directors acted in bad faith in letting Goldman repay $10 billion taken from the Troubled Asset Relief Program early, in June 2009, freeing the bank from restrictions on executive pay.

Pauley said the plaintiffs cannot amend their complaint alleging breaches of fiduciary duties, saying an earlier amended complaint failed to fix defects he had previously identified.

Lead plaintiffs included the Retirement Relief System of the City of Birmingham, Alabama pension fund, as well as Michael Brautigam, an Ohio resident and Goldman shareholder.

Brian Brooks, a partner at Smith, Segura & Raphael representing the plaintiffs, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally did not immediately respond to similar requests.

The case is a derivative lawsuit brought on behalf of Goldman, seeking changes in governance and internal controls, and with any payout going to the Wall Street bank rather than to shareholders.

Pauley said 15 current and former Goldman executives and directors had been named as defendants. Among these were Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar, and former director Rajat Gupta, who was convicted in June of insider trading in a separate case.

Goldman still faces other shareholder litigation. In June, for example, Pauley’s colleague Paul Crotty said shareholders may pursue claims that they lost money after Goldman concealed conflicts of interest in how it put together several collateralized debt obligations transactions.

Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice said it ended a criminal probe into Goldman activity that predated the financial crisis, while the bank said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ended a civil probe into a sale of $1.3 billion of subprime mortgage debt.

The case is In re: Goldman Sachs Mortgage Servicing Shareholder Derivative Litigation, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-04544.

(Reporting By Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Richard Chang)

(Reuters) – Chinese display-advertising provider Focus Media Holding Ltd (FMCN.O) said it received a bid from a consortium that includes its chief executive and private equity firm Carlyle Group that values the company at $3.49 billion.

Shortseller Muddy Waters, which has in the past alleged that Focus Media overstated its assets and overpaid for acquisitions, welcomed the offer, saying the firm was better off in private hands.

The offer of $27 per American depositary share represents a premium of 15.5 percent to Focus Media stock’s Friday close. Shares of the company rose 8 percent to $25.26 on Monday on the Nasdaq, but they were still well short of the bid price.

Shares of several Chinese companies have been hammered in the recent past after allegations of accounting scandals by shortsellers such as Muddy Waters and Citron Research.

“The markets are far better off if a few deep-pocketed investors own Focus Media instead of mutual funds and other public shareholders,” Muddy Waters’s Carson Block told Reuters.

Focus Media has repeatedly denied Muddy Waters’ accusations that the company overstated its assets and overpaid for acquisitions.

The offer for Focus Media is the latest in a string of management-led buyouts of U.S.-listed Chinese companies, as executives look to take advantage of big discounts to peers on the Hong Kong and Chinese stock markets.

Fushi Copperweld Inc (FSIN.O), China TransInfo Technology Corp (CTFO.O) and Winner Medical Group Inc (WWIN.O) have accepted go-private offers from their managements.

Shares of Focus Media, which operates flat-panel display screens in commercial buildings, trade at a multiple of 8.3 times their forward earnings. This is at a deep discount to the stock’s five-year historical average price-to-earnings multiple and the industry average, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine.

“Focus Media is under a lot of valuation pressure because of controversies surrounding the company,” T.H. Capital Research analyst Tian Hou told Reuters, adding that a successful deal will help other Chinese companies regain credibility among U.S. investors.

The Focus Media deal triggered a 7 percent jump in shares of New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc (EDU.N), which Muddy Waters has accused of lying about its network and cash balances.

“We think the (Focus Media) stock has been undervalued trading at high single-digit PE when the earnings growth is expected to be above 20-25 percent,” Macquarie Securities analyst Jiong Shao told Reuters.

“Focus Media has a great business, generates tons of cash, pays dividend and buys back its shares.”

DEAL DETAILS

The consortium making the offer for Focus Media also includes CITIC Capital Partners, FountainVest Partners, CDH Investments and China Everbright Ltd.

The company’s board has formed a committee of independent directors to consider the offer.

CEO Jason Nanchun Jiang held about 18 percent of the company’s outstanding shares as of December 31, according to its annual report. He bought $11 million of the company’s ADSs in November.

The transaction will be financed with a combination of debt and equity capital.

The proposal letter dated August 12 said the consortium has been in discussions with Citigroup Global Markets Asia Ltd, Credit Suisse AG and DBS Bank Ltd about financing the debt portion.

The banks have indicated to certain of the consortium members that they are highly confident of their ability to fully underwrite the debt financing, the company said.

(Reporting by Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore, Additional reporting by Himank Sharma; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

(Reuters) – World stock markets eased on Monday after weak Japanese economic data added to the latest data showing a slowing global economy, while the euro rose as investors exited bearish bets against the common currency.

European shares posted their worst day in more than a week and U.S. stocks snuffed a six-day rally for the S&P 500 after Japan reported its gross domestic product expanded just 0.3 percent in the second quarter.

Japan’s growth was half the expected rate, raising doubts about the global economy while highlighting the impact of Europe’s debt crisis on world demand.

China’s output of refined copper dropped 6.8 percent in July from the previous month’s record high production, customs data showed on Monday. [ID:nL4E8J91HS] Chinese copper consumption is considered an economic bellwether.

Traders are looking for direction, with the S&P 500 hovering not far off its highest level in more than four years. Stocks’ recent gains have been driven by hopes for further central bank easing amid signs of global economic weakness.

Janna Sampson, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois, said she was still cautious over the potential for Europe’s debt crisis to blindside the market. She said she would be closely monitoring data to see if improvement in the U.S. labor market would continue.

“I’m not sure we will get out of the summer without a pullback,” Sampson said.

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was down 37.59 points, or 0.28 percent, at 13,170.36. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX was down 2.44 points, or 0.17 percent, at 1,403.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index .IXIC was down 1.92 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,018.94.

In Europe, the FTSEurofirst 300 index .FTEU3 closed down 0.4 percent at 1,094.74 points – its biggest intraday fall since ending down 1.2 percent on August 2.

The euro rose against the dollar for the first time in four days as investors pared bearish bets, but doubts about the ability of the European Central Bank to rein in the region’s debt crisis kept pressure on the currency.

Still, sterling fell against the euro on expectations that UK data due this week will bolster the case for more monetary stimulus from the Bank of England to support a flagging economy.

The euro remained below a one-month high hit last week in thin trade.

“The euro is well below the highs of last week and today we are seeing some short-covering, but the move today is generally uninspired in a lackluster session,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman in New York.

The euro was up 0.37 percent at $1.2335 and the U.S. dollar index .DXY was down 0.17 percent at 82.414.

Short-covering entails buying the euro to close bets that the currency would fall.

Many analysts expect the euro to tread water until September 12, when the German constitutional court is to deliver its verdict on the euro zone rescue fund and the fiscal pact for budget discipline.

Oil prices rose in choppy trade to hit a three-month peak on concerns about North Sea supply and Middle East tensions, but fears about slowing growth checked gains.

Brent pared gains and U.S. crude turned lower on the Japanese data and worries of slower global growth.

Brent crude was up $1.35 at $114.30 a barrel.

U.S. crude for September delivery settled at $92.73 a barrel, down 14 cents.

U.S. Treasuries yields dropped for a third day as some investors were drawn to higher yields caused by a dramatic sell-off earlier this month.

The benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note was up 2/32 in price to yield 1.6505 percent.

Copper fell for a fourth straight trading session as worries about global economic weakness dented the outlook for industrial metals demand.

(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Karen Brettell; Editing by Leslie Adler and Chizu Nomiyama)