Forex Today: Dollar aims higher ahead of NFP report

Valeria Bednarik FXStreet

What you need to know on Friday, December 3:

The dollar gathered some momentum in the last trading session of the day on Thursday, helped by upbeat local data and higher US government bond yields, as concerns were put temporarily aside. Wall Street posted substantial gains, although major indexes are still in the red on a weekly basis.

As for government bond yields, that on the 10-year Treasury note peaked at 1.466%, holding nearby at the session ends. US indexes posted substantial gains, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up nearly 700 points and the S&P500 adding roughly 2% at the time being.

Different US Federal Reserve officials backed chief Jerome Powell’s recent words. Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President Mary Daly said the Fed might need to taper asset purchases faster than anticipated, while Richmond President Thomas Barkin said inflation has gone up faster than he expected due to the virus, vaccines and fiscal support.

European Central Bank policymaker Fabio Panetta said that inflation and the new pandemic wave is endangering the Union’s recovery at an early stage, although earlier this week, he noted that there’s no need to tighten monetary policy to control inflation, driven by temporary factors.

The EUR/USD pair briefly pierced the 1.1300 level, hovering around it heading into the Asian opening. The British Pound remained weak, with GBP/USD stuck around 1.1330. Commodity-linked currencies edged lower, with the AUD/USD pair trading below 0.7100 and the USD/CAD above 1.2800.

Gold fell to a fresh one-month low of 1,761.87, having bounced modestly ahead of the close. Crude oil prices fell to fresh multi-month lows but bounced back, with WTI currently trading at $66.10 a barrel.

The US will publish the Nonfarm Payrolls report on Friday. The country is expected to have added 550K new jobs in November, while the unemployment rate is seen contracting to 4.5% from 4.6%. The country added 531K positions in October, which brought the total number of jobs to 148.3 million, leaving a shortfall of 4.2 million compared to pre-pandemic levels.

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Author

Valeria Bednarik

FXStreet

Valeria Bednarik was born and lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her passion for math and numbers pushed her into studying economics in her younger years.

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