NEW YORK, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- The dollar was mixed against most major currencies on Tuesday amid widened U.S. trade gap, worse-than-expected quarterly results of a major company, and a tightening move by the Chinese central bank.

    U.S. trade deficit jumped 9.7 percent to 36.4 billion U.S. dollars in November, the Commerce Department reported. Exports rose 0.9 percent and imports rose 2.6 percent. Two-thirds of the increase in the deficit was due to a wider petroleum deficit as oil prices rose.

    U.S. exports will continue to benefit both from the recovery in world trade and from the extra competitiveness supplied by the weak dollar, analysts said. However, U.S. trade gap will probably widen further due to rising oil prices and higher imports driven by strong domestic demand.

    Alcoa reported fourth quarter results that fell short of Wall Street expectations. The largest aluminum producer in U.S. posted a loss of 277 million dollars and revenue of 5.43 billion dollars.

    Alcoa is the first to report quarterly results in the major U.S. companies. Investors worried that coming results of other companies may also be disappointing.

    The People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, announced on Tuesday to raise the deposit reserve requirement ratio by 0.5 percentage points from Jan. 18 this year. This is the first time that the PBOC adjusted the ratio of deposit since the end of 2008 and the first increase for the ratio since June 2008.

    There are concerns that a tightening in Chinese monetary policy may slow economic growth in China and rest of the world.

    The euro bought 1.4497 dollars in late New York trading compared with 1.4519 dollars it bought late Monday. The pound rose to 1.6179 dollars from 1.6099 dollars.

    The dollar rose to 1.0381 Canadian dollars from 1.0331 Canadian dollars, and rose to 1.0179 Swiss francs from 1.0158 Swiss francs. It fell to 90.99 Japanese yen from 92.07 Japanese yen.

Special Report:  Global Financial Crisis