HONG KONG -- The yuan scraped a roughly four-year low Thursday after the People's Bank of China decided to devalue it for a third straight day, a trend benefiting some Chinese and Hong Kong stocks more than others.
The currency reached 6.447 to the dollar Thursday morning, the weakest since July 2011, after the central bank lowered its reference rate against the greenback again. A senior PBOC official discussed the deviation between the reference and market rates in a news conference, saying that the correction has basically ended and that the yuan will return to a strengthening trend at some point. These comments checked the yuan's slide in the afternoon, and the currency ended the day at 6.399.