By Dan Bell
The big driver on Friday night was the much weaker than expected US employment data which came in at only +18K new jobs for June when the market was expecting +105K jobs. The previous month was also revised down and the unemployment rate ticked up to 9.2%.
The NZD/USD had a choppy night but managed to make a new post float interbank high around 0.8380 and opens this morning around 0.8340.
Global equities and commodities were under pressure following the weaker US employment data with the Dow Jones closing down 0.5% and the CRB commodities Index down 0.8%.
The NZD continues to be one of the best performing currencies and opens on a firmer note against the major cross rates. Indicative interbank levels are 0.7790 AUD, 0.5870 EUR,0.5200 GBP, 67.20 JPY.
The key local data release this week is the NZ Q1 GDP figures on Thursday morning at 10:45 which were delayed from last week.
Offshore the markets will continue to look at the US data flow as well as a raft of data from China on Wednesday.
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Dan Bell is the senior currency strategist at HiFX in Auckland. You can contact him here
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