Kiwi bounces off lows on mixed US jobs data

Daily Currency Update

Friday’s session saw the New Zealand dollar rise from seven-month lows of 0.6950 to trade at 0.7036. The rise, which was due to a ‘mixed’ US non-farm payrolls report, brought to an end a week of losses for commodity currencies against the USD. The AUD also rose from 0.7445 to 0.7530 with the AUD/NZD cross rate slipping 15 points to 1.0700.
Despite the US jobs report beating market expectations on the ‘jobs created’ metric, other details within the report were less positive, resulting in the market tempering rate hike expectations from the Fed. 850k jobs were added to the economy however the unemployment rate rose from 5.8% to 5.9%, the participation rate was net unchanged and hourly earnings were muted. Analysts also noted that state and local government hiring contributed a surprisingly high 193k jobs.
Looking at the day ahead, we have ANZ job ads and the MI inflation gauge for Australia; both expected to be strong reads. Domestically, we will get an update on ANZ commodity prices before we head offshore again for PMI updates from China, India and Singapore. Also worth noting the US will be observing a public holiday for independence day.