1.   A series of small orders from local buyers in Latin America boosted prices and led traders expecting further declines to buy bonds to cover shorts, dealers said.

2.   Buying the shares in such a scenario is called covering the short.

3.   Covering a short occurs when traders sell borrowed securities in the hopes of buying them back at lower prices and pocketing the difference.

4.   If you guess right, the stock will fall, at which point you cover your shorts by buying the borrowed shares.

5.   But later in the morning, market players bought the yen to cover their short, or oversold positions, traders said.

6.   But the currency recovered some of its early losses after remarks by a Japanese Finance Ministry official prompted some traders to cover their short, or oversold dollar positions.

7.   But the dollar climbed later as commercial banks covered their short, or oversold, dollar positions, traders said.

8.   Buying by Japanese institutional investors who are trying to cover their short, or oversold, dollar positions, lifted the U.S. currency against the yen, traders said.

9.   The dollar rebounded from late Thursday levels in Tokyo as Japanese players covered their short, or oversold, dollar positions.

10.   They responded by covering shorts at the CSCE, buying an equivalent number of futures as those sold.