Asia Pacific Market Open – Canadian Dollar, Risk Aversion, S&P 500, US Dollar, Japanese Yen
- Canadian Dollar[1] outperforms as impressive jobs report revives hawkish BoC policy bets
- Risk aversion lingered, sending S&P 500[2] to its worst weekly performance since March
- Asia stocks may fall, boosting the Japanese Yen[3]. USD[4] may be entering consolidation mode
Find out what the #1 mistake that traders make[5] is and how you can fix it!
The Canadian Dollar saw relief thanks to an impressive local jobs report. Canada’s unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly to 5.6% in November which was a record low. The country also added 94.1k jobs versus just 10.0k anticipated, also a record high. Meanwhile the labor force participation rate increased to 64.4%, indicating that the country was able to absorb the extra hiring.
Lately, the Lonie has been under pressure as near-term Bank of Canada rate hike bets were pushed further out this week. This was largely as a result of a cautious BoC rate announcement[6] and fears about falling oil prices. Front-end government bond yields rallied on Friday, signaling hawkish monetary policy expectations that are back on the table.
Speaking of crude oil[7], the commodity was jawboned by conflicting fundamental themes. First, the commodity rose about 5.2% on news that OPEC agreed to production cuts amounting to 1.2m barrels per day. But, gains were then trimmed in the aftermath as risk aversion continued to dominant market headlines. This resulted in oil prices narrowly avoiding a bullish price signal on the weekly chart[8]
