Dollar up after Fed minutes signal taper on track

NEW YORK (Oct 9)  The U.S. dollar modestly extended gains versus major rivals Wednesday after minutes of the Federal Reserve's September policy meeting showed most members of the Federal Open Market Committee still thought it would be appropriate to begin scaling back the central bank's bond purchases later this year. The September meeting had shocked market participants when the Fed refrained from scaling back the pace of its monthly bond purchases. The ICE dollar index, which tracks the currency against six rivals, traded at 80.402, a gain of 0.4% on the day but little changed from the level seen ahead of the release of the minutes. The euro  traded at $1.3497, down from around $1.3515 ahead of the minutes, while the dollar bought 97.54 Japanese yen, up from around 97.31 yen.

By 3:00 pm (EST) gold was down $9 to $1,308, while silver lost 33 cents to $21.95. Platinum and Palladium were also down about 1% on the day.