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By Bloomberg

The dollar weakened against the euro, halting a two-day advance, before the Federal Reserve publishes minutes of its March meeting that may offer insight on the timing of U.S. interest rate increases.

A gauge of the greenback against 10 of its peers also declined, as a report this week is forecast by economists to show U.S. applications for unemployment benefits rose 15,000 to 283,000 in the seven days ended April 4. Data last week showed employers in the U.S. added 126,000 workers in March, missing the median analyst forecast of 245,000 in a Bloomberg survey. The dollar dropped against the yen after the Bank of Japan refrained from adding to record stimulus at a policy meeting.

“The dollar is in a cautious and choppy period as investors ponder where it will go from here,” said Ian Stannard, the European head of currency strategy at Morgan Stanley in London. “The gain in the past two days suggested the market has looked beyond the dip in employment data. The dollar is now retreating as the market is waiting to see if the Fed will look beyond that data weakness as well.”

The dollar depreciated 0.5 percent to $1.0864 per euro as of 10:11 a.m. London time. It reached $1.0458 on March 16, the strongest level since January 2003, and fell 0.4 percent to 119.86 yen.

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index declined 0.4 percent to 1,188.29 after advancing 0.9 percent in the past two days.

Minutes of the Fed’s March 17-18 policy meeting will be published at 2 p.m. in Washington on Wednesday.

“There’s still a little bit of doubt in the market as to really where the U.S. economy is, and more importantly, how the Fed perceives the U.S. economy,” said Raiko Shareef, a markets strategist in Wellington at Bank of New Zealand Ltd. The dollar is “in a little bit of a holding pattern,” he said.