US dollar rebounds on upbeat data

The U.S. dollar rebounded against major currencies Wednesday after data showed U.S. companies added more jobs than expected in February. U.S. private companies added 198,000 jobs in February, down from January's 215,000, according to the National Employment Report jointly released by Automatic Data Processing (ADP) and Moody's Analytics. Although the figure is smaller than the previous month, it's still better than forecast. The euro/dollar rate dropped below the level of 1.3000 after the official data showed euro zone's exports fell in the last quarter of 2012. Meanwhile, the pound fell sharply versus the dollar on expectation that the Bank of England may expand asset-purchasing scale. The yen weakened as market sentiment improved and investors sought assets with high risk and high returns. The Dow Jones Industrial Average refreshed all-time closing high on Wednesday for a second day. The European Central Bank will hold its policy meeting Thursday and investors were paying great attention to its decision on the interest rate. Meanwhile, investors were awaiting the official U.S. job data for February due to be released Friday In late New York trading, the euro dropped to 1.2994 dollars from 1.3041 dollars of the previous session and the British pound slipped to 1.5040 from 1.5112 dollars. The dollar edged up to 0.9477 Swiss francs from 0.9418 and went up to 1.0312 Canadian dollars from 1.0278. The dollar bought 94.07 Japanese yen, compared with 93.29 in the previous session.