NZD/USD seesaws near 14-day low on the NFP day

NZD/USD stays under pressure while taking rounds to 0.6810, the 14-day low, during early Friday’s Asian session. The pair shows less reaction to New Zealand’s new employment indicator, Total Filled Jobs. The reason could be traced from the broad USD strength.

Total Filled Jobs is a new monthly employment indicator introduced by the Statistics New Zealand during late-2019. It measures paid jobs that existed in the week ending on the 20th of the reference month. The November month readout crossed 2.16M prior to 2.24M figures. New Zealand’s (NZ) headlines employment figures marked soft outcomes during their latest release in November. Further, NZ GDP was also revised down for the second quarter (Q2), despite upbeat third quarter (Q3) reading.

With this, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) might choose to keep its cautious optimism. “Market pricing for RBNZ implies only a 10% chance of easing in February, with a terminal rate of 0.87% (RBNZ OCR currently at 1.0%),” says Westpac.

The US dollar held its upside amid the US-Iran de-escalation as the US stands ready to have serious conversations with Iran without any preconditions. However, the latest allegation from the global leaders that Iran was behind the Ukrainian plane crash that has Canadian and British citizens seems to halt the play off-late. Further, comments from the US Federal Reserve (Fed) policymakers were mostly neutral supporting no change in the US central bank's current policy, despite few signs of soft inflation.

This affects the market’s risk-tone and hence the US 10-year treasury yields steps back to 1.855% by the end of Thursday’s session whereas Wall Street keeps the gains with benchmarks rising 0.50% on an average.

On the trade front, the US President Donald Trump said he will begin discussing the phase-two of the trade deal with China right away but will wait for the election results to sign it. The Chinese trade diplomats will reach Washington on January 15 for signing in for the phase-one deal.

Looking forward, the US monthly employment data will be in the spotlight while news concerning how the US-Iran trade war gets defied could also offer intermediate moves. Further, the US-China story could keep its importance in a case of any surprise announcements.

Technical Analysis

Unless the NZD/USD prices stay below a 21-day SMA level of 0.6645, odds supporting further weakness towards December 18 low of 0.6554 remain high. Alternatively, an upside break of 0.6645 on a daily closing basis can challenge 0.6680 and 0.6700 numbers to the north.