It went up. Usually it is meaningless to try to dissect daily moves in currencies. Here's what i-Recap report says about today's currency action: The dollar fell Tuesday, coming under pressure amid weak January retail sales, a wider than expected fourth quarter current account deficit, a sharp drop in Treasury yields, and concern that the Fed might not raise rates by as much as some think. The euro erased the overnight losses that stemmed from a weak German ZEW report, and the yen also benefited from reports that Treasury warned Japan on intervention. In late trading, the euro was at $1.2018 from $1.1953 late Monday. The dollar was at Y117.44 from Y117.87.
The reason that I say that it is usually meaningless to try to find out why an intraday move took place is because there is a lot of noise. The price action tells the story. The newspapers make up a story to explain the price action. I remember being puzzled several months ago (probably almost a year ago) when Greenspan made a speech and made it sound like they were going to continue raising rates longer than people had expected. Sounds bullish for the dollar right? Well, the dollar sold off. The story that fxstreet gave was that "Traders questioned how much mileage the dollar could gain on expectations the Fed would continue to tighten, noting that weakness in the euro and yen eventually would boost the economic outlooks of Europe and Japan, making their currencies more attractive." It is an ambiguous market. One day they focus on interest rate differential, the next day capital appreciation. Or, you get days like the one described above where the argument for why the dollar sold off was because a weak yen and euro would eventually lead to a strong yen and euro.
Right on with the meaningless part. The exact opposite story will likely make the press before the end of the week.