NEW YORK, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. dollar recovered against other major currencies in late trading on Thursday, as U.S. Federal Reserves built up the possibility of interest rate hikes in December, as widely expected by investors.
"Almost all participants expressed the view that another increase in the target range for the federal funds rate was likely to be warranted fairly soon, if incoming information on the labor market and inflation was in line with or stronger than their current expectations," said the Thursday minutes of the Nov. 7-8 session of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates.
The Fed also stressed that it would consider changing the term "further gradual increases" in the target range for the federal funds rate, in a bid to add more flexibility to the committee's policy-making.
At the meeting this month, Fed's benchmark lending rate was set in a range of 2-2.25 percent. Yet the likely language change in Fed's future statements spurred concerns over whether the central bank's roughly quarterly hikes will continue in 2019.
"Many participants indicated that it might be appropriate at some upcoming meetings to begin to transition to statement language that placed greater emphasis on the evaluation of incoming data in assessing the economic and policy outlook," the minutes said. "Such a change would help to convey the committee's flexible approach."
In late New York trading, the euro increased to 1.1388 dollars from 1.1376 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound fell to 1.2782 dollars from 1.2834 U.S. dollars in the previous session. The Australian dollar rose to 0.7319 dollar from 0.7314 dollar.
The U.S. dollar bought 113.43 Japanese yen, lower than 113.53 Japanese yen of the previous session. The U.S. dollar was up to 0.9963 Swiss franc from 0.9930 Swiss franc, and it was up to 1.3274 Canadian dollars from 1.3271 Canadian dollars. Enditem
