Updates to Asia afternoon

By Tom Westbrook

SINGAPORE, Jan 28 (Reuters) - The dollar paused for breath on Wednesday after a selloff turned into a rout when U.S. President Donald Trump seemed to shrug off recent weakness for the global reserve currency, while stocks scaled record highs on optimism about earnings.

The dollar's dive hoisted the euro EUR= over $1.20 for the first time since 2021, sent the Australian dollar AUD= above 70 cents to a three-year high, lifted gold to a new peak and boosted commodity prices - which are counted in dollars. FRX/

The ailing yen JPY= was helped further away from recent lows, before trade steadied in the Asia session and the dollar clawed its way back to 152.76 yen.

The dollar selloff is the sharpest since Trump's tariff blitz rocked markets last April. It has been driven by concern at his erratic policymaking, attacks on the Federal Reserve, the interest rate outlook and, most recently, signals on Friday the U.S. was willing to sell dollars to help Japan to boost the yen.

"Dollar's doing great," Trump replied, when a reporter asked if he thought it had fallen too much lately.

FX market participants are always looking for a trend to jump on," said Steve Englander, head of global G10 currency research at Standard Chartered in New York.

"Often officials push back against abrupt currency moves but when the President expresses indifference or even endorses the move it emboldens USD sellers to keep pushing," he said.

The dollar dropped more than 9% through the first year of Trump's second term in 2025.

The Federal Reserve meets to set rates later on Wednesday, though no policy change is expected.

The focus will be on whether the tone lines up with the two rate cuts markets have priced for this year and how Chair Jerome Powell handles questions about Fed independence, given his forceful pushback against threats of a criminal indictment.

GOLD'S RECORD RUN LEAVES BITCOIN BEHIND

The weaker dollar filtered through to other assets and helped gold XAU= strike a record above $5,241 an ounce and benchmark Brent crude futures LCOc1 to hit a four-month high of $67.98 a barrel.

Treasury yields US10YT=RR were broadly steady in Asia trade at 4.233%, while bitcoin BTC= has been notably left behind and remained pinned just below $90,000.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 .SPX edged to a record closing high overnight ahead of big tech earnings beginning with Meta META.O and Tesla TSLA.O after the close on Wednesday.

S&P 500 futures ESc1 were 0.2% higher in the Asia session and European futures STXec1 were 0.2% lower..N.EU

Hong Kong's Hang Seng benchmark .HSI rallied 2% to a 4-1/2-year high. .HK

Hotter-than-expected inflation in Australia in December has driven expectations of a rate hike as soon as next week, with ANZ and Westpac switching rate forecasts after the data release to leave all of Australia's "Big Four" banks predicting a hike.

Indonesia's equity market dived 7% after index provider MSCI MSCI.N said it was concerned about opaque ownership and trading and halted updates to Indonesian entries in its products, which are tracked by global investors.

(Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Jacqueline Wong)

((tom.westbrook@tr.com; +65 6973 8284;))