The US Dollar ended the week in Asia on a down note as traders looked to take advantage of the perception that a full blown global recovery was underway.
Stocks extended gains earlier in the US due to a slide in the number of unemployment claims as well as a solid run of earnings reports and these gains carried over once again to Asian equities. A show of strength in recently battered Chinese markets helped push traders into the direction of riskier assets and the yen and dollar suffered for it. The EUR/USD only moved in one direction today, and that was up. The single European currency began the session at lows near 1.4064 and eventually made its way to over 1.4135 as a high. EUR/JPY made a solid 50 pip push higher today as well which ended near 134.80. Other yen crosses followed the path higher including the AUD/JPY, NZD/JPY and to a lesser degree GBP/JPY. USD/JPY showed some yen strength as the pair drifted lower to 95.25 lows, although only a 20 pip move for the day.
The big winners of the day were the so called ''commodity currencies'', boosted by investors looking for higher rates of return in the form of higher interest rates. NZD/USD drove higher by almost 75 pips from its humble opening just above 0.6500, and the AUD/USD moved from near 0.8235 to fall just short of the 0.8300 big figure. The move witnessed in USD/CAD was unique for the Asia session in that the usually sluggish moves gave way to a dynamic trade opportunity as the pair collapsed over 75 pips from 1.0850 to under 1.0780. The Canadian Dollar will get a nice test later in the day with GDP, and the US will end the week with advanced GDP. Have a nice weekend.
