The ‘Greenback’ has weakened against most of its peers due to the currency still being impacted by Friday’s double whammy of negative jobs data. Employers in the world’s largest economy added fewer jobs in March than forecast, one bright point in the data however was that the nation’s overall jobless rate has now fallen to 7.6%
The data took economists by surprise as many had been predicting that at least 190,000 new jobs would be created. Instead US payrolls grew by just 88,000 workers, the worst gain in nine-months and far worse than the revised gain of 268,000 recorded in February.
With the Eurozone situation looking precarious yet again and with attention shifting from Cyprus to Portugal we could possibly see the Dollar make some gains against the single currency.
At the moment this has not happened as investors temporarily shrug off concerns as bond sales go favourably in Italy and Spain. Italian bonds in particular have surprised the markets after rising back to their January highs despite the country not having a government.
Against the Japanese Yen the US Dollar is set to overtake the 100 yen milestone as the Bank of Japans new monetary policy begins to devalue the currency. The Asian currency plummeted to within two Yen of the 100 mark against the Dollar. Once that milestone is breached, some strategists say profit-taking could temper the greenback’s rally, though the appetite of Japanese life insurers for higher-yielding foreign assets is likely to maintain downward pressure on the yen for much of this year.
The next important economic release for the US currency comes on Wednesday evening when the minutes of the last Federal Reserve minutes are released. Friday sees the release of the newest retail sales data.
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