The USD is mixed
With the US and Canada jobs report on deck for release at 8:30 AM ET/1330 GMT, the NZD is the strongest currency as the North American session begins and the CHF is the weakest. The USD is mixed to down with modest gains vs the EUR, GBP, CHF and bigger declines vs the AUD and NZD. The CAD is unchanged. Overnight, OPEC agreed to distribute oil cuts of 500K among its members (395K in OPEC and 105K in Russia). However, there is a loophole in that Russias condensate is not included. In China, the government waived import tariffs on pork and soybeans. That is good news for the trade negotiations as the December 15 new tariff date approaches fast.
The ranges and changes pictures below are showing contained price action. The EURUSD and USDCAD (ahead of their jobs report) are both trading in a less than 20 pip trading range. The GBPUSD has the largest range but sits in the middle of the high to low trading range (and down). The GBPUSD traded as low as 1.3110 before bouncing. Recall its 200 week MA is at 1.3098. The price broke above that key level this week (for the first time since April 2018 so keep that level in mind).
In other markets:
- spot gold is trading down $0.45 or -0.03% at $1475.60
- WTI crude oil futures after the OPEC decision is trading down $0.18 of my 0.31% at $58.25. Brent crude is near unchanged levels at $63.37
In the premarket for US stocks, they are trading higher ahead of the employment report:
- Dow, +56 points
- S&P index 6.4 points
- NASDAQ index, +23.35 points
In the European equity markets, the major indices are also trading higher:
- German DAX, +0.18%
- France's CAC, +0.39%
- UK's FTSE, +0.8%
- Spain's Ibex, +0.8%
- Italy's FTSE MIB, +0.1%
In the US debt market, yields are trading down with the 2 year down marginally and the 30 year down -2.1 basis points (flatter yield curve)
In the European debt market, yields are also lower with the benchmark 10 year yields down from -0.4 basis points to-3.2 basis points.
We will see how the dust settles after the US and Canada employment data at the bottom of the hour.
