U.S. dollar declines on Fed minutes

The U.S. dollar fell against most major currencies on Wednesday as investors were digesting the newly-released Federal Reserve minutes for its July policy meeting.

Fed officials were divided in July on the timing of raising interest rates this year, with some urging to go soon given the robust labor market and others preferring to wait until the inflation meets target, showed the minutes for the central bank's latest meeting released on Wednesday.

"Some participants viewed recent economic developments as indicating that labor market conditions were at or close to those consistent with maximum employment and expected that the recent progress in reaching the committee' s inflation objective would continue, even with further steps to gradually remove monetary policy accommodation," said the minutes.

It also showed that "several preferred to defer another increase in the federal funds rate until they were more confident that inflation was moving closer to 2 percent on a sustained basis."

"Members generally agreed that, before taking another step in removing monetary accommodation, it was prudent to accumulate more data in order to gauge the underlying momentum in the labor market and economic activity," according to the minutes.

Analysts said the minutes failed to give out clear signals of Fed's next move, which weighed on the greenback on Wednesday.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, was down more 0.14 percent at 94.660 in late trading.

In late New York trading, the euro rose to 1.1291 dollars from 1.1275 dollars of the previous session, and the British pound climbed to 1.3056 dollars from 1.3036 dollars. The Australian dollar went down to 0.7647 dollars from 0.7698 dollars.

The dollar bought 100.21 Japanese yen, lower than 100.26 yen in the previous session. The dollar fell to 0.9618 Swiss francs from 0.9621 Swiss francs, and it inched up to 1.2848 Canadian dollars from 1.2844 Canadian dollars. Endit