Dollar rises after Fed minutes

The US dollar continued the upward trend against most major currencies on Wednesday after minutes of the Federal Reserve's latest policy meeting indicated that the central bank may reduce bond-buying scale steadily in the coming months. The minutes released Wednesday of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting in December showed Fed policymakers saw diminishing economic benefits from the quantitative easing and expressed concern about financial risks. Following its Dec. 17-18 meeting, the central bank announced the first tapering of its massive asset purchases by 10 billion dollars starting in January. Fed officials will meet again on Jan. 28-29 to discuss the next move of withdrawing from its monetary stimulus. In addition, U.S. private-sector employment increased by 238, 000 jobs in December, surpassing November as the strongest month for job growth in 2013, according to a report published by private payroll processor ADP. The figure also beat analysts' expectations of an increase of 200,000 and pushed the dollar to the strongest level against the euro in a month. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against the six major currencies, rose 0.3 percent to 81.04 in late New York trading. In late New York trading, the euro slipped to 1.3578 dollars from 1.3618 dollars of the previous session, and the Australian dollar dropped to 0.8907 dollar from 0.8922 dollar. The British pound increased to 1.6447 dollars from 1.6407 dollars. The dollar bought 104.82 yen, higher than 104.48 yen of the previous session. The greenback moved up to 0.9109 Swiss franc from 0.9086, and went up to 1.0806 Canadian dollars from 1.0766. In the previous session, the dollar gained on narrowed U.S. trade deficit in November. U.S. international trade deficit in goods and services decreased to 34.3 billion U.S. dollars in November from the revised 39.3 billion dollars in October, the lowest level in four years. Investors are awaiting a non-farm payroll report for the final month of 2013 due to be released on Friday by the Labor Department.