Dollar's nosedive stirs joint intervention jitters

By Satomi Noguchi

TOKYO (Reuters) - The dollar's sharp slide to 13-year lows against the yen and fresh all-time lows versus the euro on Monday is stoking jitters about the possibility of joint central bank intervention to prop up the dollar.

"The speed of the slide in the dollar/yen is so rapid that U.S. action alone can no longer stop the dollar's downward trend," said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investment.

"The time is ripe for coordinated intervention by U.S., European and Japanese authorities."

Remarks on Monday by Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga also kept investors on their toes.

"We will cooperate with European and U.S. currency authorities and will monitor markets very carefully," Nukaga told reporters, adding that the latest moves in currency markets had been excessively volatile and that he would watch markets carefully.

Nukaga's comments gave a slight lift to the dollar, which last traded near 97 yen after earlier dropping by over 3 percent to a 13-year low of 95.77 yen on electronic trading platform EBS.

"His comments were different from usual so that led to some speculation about joint intervention," said Hiroshi Yoshida, a forex manager at Shinkin Central Bank.

Yoshida said, however, that while some traders thought coordinated intervention was a possibility, there weren't many who believed that the chances of such action were high.