The dollar gained versus the euro Thursday, derived by a weaker tone in equity markets that tends to signal risk aversion but trapped in a tight trading range. The currency pair remains trapped in a stalemate between support at $1.4800 and resistance at $1.5050.

The dollar index rose to 75.459 from 75.108 late Wednesday. The dollar and the Japanese yen were both supported versus other rivals as U.S. stocks opened lower, following weakness in European and Asian equities. Declines by oil and gold reinforced support for the low-yielding currencies, strategists said.

The British pound ignored a raft of data on Thursday, including a rise in October retail sales data. The pound slipped to $1.6630, down from $1.6736.

As the end of the year approaches, investors and traders tend to unwind short positions and book profits on good bets made during the year, analysts said. That activity tends to temporarily support assets considered less risky, including the U.S. dollar. It’s tough to get excited about any gains in the dollar index until it closes above key technical barriers.

Today the dollar pared some of its gains after the U.S. Labor Department said 505,000 Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits in the latest week, flat from the prior week and a level several analysts say is still too high to indicate payrolls numbers will turn positive in the near term.

Euro bulls remain sensitive to recent efforts by the European Central Bank to talk the single currency down to support export-based economies.

The dollar and the yen have tended to hold an inverse relationship to moves by equities and commodities in the wake of the global financial crisis.

The Bank of Japan will conclude its two-day policy meeting Friday, and is widely expected to leave its overnight call rate target at 0.1%. Some analysts also say the yen is poised to benefit from China’s eventual revaluation of the Yuan, which is now kept artificially low against the dollar.