By Deborah Levine & William L. Watts, MarketWatch NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The dollar declined versus the euro on Tuesday as the shared currency saw a respite from selling pressure and equity markets rebounded, indicating more comfort among investors to hold assets considered riskier and less demand for the relative safe-haven status of the greenback. The euro (CUR_EURUSD 1.2398, +0.0006, +0.0484%) rose to $1.2432, up from $1.2384 in North American trading late Monday, a day on which it sank as low as $1.2233 -- its lowest level since April 2006. Against the Japanese yen, the euro (CUR_EURYEN 113.9800, -2.0200, -1.7414%) rose to ¥115.36, up from ¥114.61 Monday. By Deborah Levine & William L. Watts, MarketWatch NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The dollar declined versus the euro on Tuesday as the shared currency saw a respite from selling pressure and equity markets rebounded, indicating more comfort among investors to hold assets considered riskier and less demand for the relative safe-haven status of the greenback. The euro (CUR_EURUSD 1.2398, +0.0006, +0.0484%) rose to $1.2432, up from $1.2384 in North American trading late Monday, a day on which it sank as low as $1.2233 -- its lowest level since April 2006. Against the Japanese yen, the euro (CUR_EURYEN 113.9800, -2.0200, -1.7414%) rose to ¥115.36, up from ¥114.61 Monday. The dollar index (DXY 86.09, -0.11, -0.13%) , which tracks the U.S. unit against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, slipped to 85.934, down from 86.240 late Monday. "Investors are dallying with risk-on and euro-on, but in a very tepid form," said Steven Englander, global head of G-10 foreign exchange strategy at Citi. Benchmark U.S. stock indexes opened higher. That followed some renewed interest in equities in Asia and Europe, signaling a return to risk appetite, which generally tends to favor the euro while pressuring the dollar and the Japanese yen. Greece's Finance Ministry confirmed Tuesday it had received €14.5 billion ($18.4 billion) in bilateral loans from fellow euro-zone countries via the European Commission. The funds come on top of the €5.5 billion already received from the International Monetary Fund and will ensure that Greece meets a €19 billion refunding commitment on Wednesday. The news offered little surprise and had little impact on the market, strategists said. In one sign that investor sentiment has stabilized, the yield premium demanded by investors to hold southern European government bonds over German bunds continues to narrow following European Central Bank purchases. The spread between 10-year Greek and German bonds narrowed to less than five full percentage points, after blowing out to 10 percentage points earlier this month as the crisis deepened. Meanwhile, strategists at Brown Brothers Harriman said the risks for the euro remain "strongly tilted to the downside." The euro showed little reaction to much steeper-than-expected drop in the ZEW gauge of German investor confidence. Read about the ZEW index. The dollar also remained lower after a pair of U.S. economic reports showed housing starts rose more than expected while producer prices fell last month. Read about housing starts. Read about PPI. British pound, Japanese yen The British pound (CUR_GBPUSD 1.4465, -0.0024, -0.1657%) turned up versus the dollar to $1.4493, from $1.4472 late Monday. Sterling was undercut earlier by a faster-than-expected acceleration of the annual inflation rate to 3.7% in April. The rise required Bank of England Governor Mervyn King to pen an open letter to Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne explaining why the central bank had missed the 2% target by more than a full percentage point. See more on U.K. inflation. The dollar (CUR_USDYEN 92.6100, -0.0100, -0.0108%) rose versus the yen, after being lower in Asian trading hours. The U.S. currency bought ¥92.78, up from ¥92.52 late Monday. Japan's finance minister, Naoto Kan said "although our nation's economy is recovering, stock markets have declined and the yen has temporarily strengthened because of the impact of the situation in Europe." Kan added that he believed stocks and the yen "will gradually stabilize," according to Dow Jones Newswires. The Bank of Japan said Tuesday it garnered total bids of $210 million for its dollar-supply operation starting from May 20. All the bids were accepted, the central bank said.

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