The euro fluctuated versus the dollar and the yen amid speculation European Central Bank President Mario Draghi will announce measures as soon as this week to ease the region’s debt crisis.
The 17-nation currency traded at almost the strongest in two months versus the dollar before erasing gains as global stocks declined. A member of the European Parliament said yesterday Draghi told lawmakers he’d be comfortable purchasing debt with maturities as longs as about three years. Australia’s dollar climbed from a six-week low against the greenback after the Reserve Bank of Australia refrained from cutting the developed world’s highest benchmark rate.
“There is still hesitance in the market about how much the ECB can actually announce, which is why the euro is fighting these rallies,” said Vassili Serebriakov, a currency strategist at Wells Fargo & Co. in New York. “The example of the Draghi story, or leak from a closed meeting with EU lawmakers, shows there is still scope for rumors, so the market is trying to position ahead of Thursday.”
The euro fell 0.2 percent to $1.2573 at 9:24 a.m. New York time, after climbing to $1.2638 on Aug. 31, the strongest since July 2. The shared currency was little changed at 98.55 yen, after appreciating to 99.03 yen on Aug. 31, the strongest since Aug. 21. The yen fell 0.1 percent to 78.37 per dollar.

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The Stoxx Europe 600 Index of shares fell 0.6 percent while futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SXXP) declined 0.1 percent.
The euro has dropped 4.1 percent this year, the worst performance among 10 developed-nation currencies tracked by Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes. The yen declined 3.1 percent, and the dollar
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