By Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — The euro lost ground to its major rivals Wednesday ahead of key European manufacturing data.
During East Asian trading hours, the euro EURUSD -0.18% changed hands at $1.3465, down from $1.3513 in late North American action Tuesday.
The moves came as stocks fell, first in the U.S. and then on Asian bourses, weighed by a downward revision to U.S. economic growth and a surprise contraction in Chinese manufacturing, according to the preliminary HSBC Purchasing Managers Index. See report on Chinese manufacturing data.
The dollar index DXY +0.26% , which tracks the greenback against a trade-weighted basket of six other currencies, rose to 78.475 from 78.252 late Tuesday.
The euro was likely to react to the preliminary euro-zone manufacturing PMI, due out later in the day, along with separate PMI results from France and Germany.
Other major currencies also lost ground to the U.S. unit Wednesday, with the British pound GBPUSD +0.00% falling to $1.5613 from $1.5637. Against the Japanese yen, the dollar USDJPY -0.02% advanced to ¥77.03 from ¥77.00 Tuesday.
The Australian dollar AUDUSD -0.52% fell by a larger margin, losing 0.9% during the Asian trading day to 97.58 U.S. cents, according to FactSet data.
Michael Kitchen is Asia editor for MarketWatch and is based in Los Angeles.
