Dollar drives higher versus yen, equities steady post Fed

The dollar hit a four-month high against the yen on Thursday on expectations of monetary stimulus measures in Japan.

The U.S. Federal Reserve's latest commitment to supporting growth helped steady world equity and commodity markets, as did Chinese data pointing to rising factory output and orders.

The dollar extended this week's push against the Japanese currency to as high as 80.14 yen, aided by a growing belief among investors that the Bank of Japan will unveil further monetary easing at its policy meeting on October 30.

"Yen weakness overnight continues to reflect building expectations of additional monetary policy easing from the BoJ at next week's meeting," said Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi currency analyst Lee Hardman.

European shares <.FTEU3> followed the example set by Asian equities to open broadly flat at 1093.84 points, stabilizing after a near 3 percent slide in the first half of the week.

London's FTSE 100 , Paris's CAC-40 and Frankfurt's DAX were all little changed, while the MSCI index of global shares <.MIWD00000PUS>, which has also suffered in recent days, was up 0.13 percent at 3.10 a.m. EDT.

Lifting the mood were comments from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology predicting the country's factory output should pick up towards the end of the year and a survey showing orders at their highest levels in months.

Britain is also expected to announce later that its economy pulled out of recession in the third quarter.

The euro which has been rattled by drab data and uncertainty over deeply indebted Spain and Greece this week, was up 0.2 percent at $1.29975, off a near two-week low.

Following to the trend, German government bond futures fell in early moves, mirroring falls in U.S. Treasuries after the Federal Reserve held course on monetary policy.

Oil prices rose back above $108 a barrel, after falling for a seventh consecutive session on Wednesday. London copper added 0.7 percent to $7,872 a metric ton (1.1023 tons) and gold edged up 0.3 percent to $1,706.79 an ounce in thin trade.

(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)