Forex Marketz Daily Forex News – Fully Markets Update
The Australian dollar continued to push higher this morning after a stronger-than-expected jobs report crossed the news wires. For the month of March, Australia gained 60,900 new jobs against an expectation that the island nation would add just 20,000. This was the jobs report posted since October 2015. In February, the country gained 2,800 employees (revised higher from -6,400).
Most of the gains were seen within the full-time sector which rose by 74,500 new positions. This remarkable increase in full-time jobs has not been seen in 30 years, 1987. Looking at the part-time sector, it lost 13,600 employees. The unemployment rate was steady at 5.9 percent. That was expected. The participation rate increased to 64.8% against expectations of remaining steady at 64.6%.
Jobs in Australia boost Bond Yields
As the news report hit the news wires, front-end government bond yields soared higher. What does this indicate? This indicates that bond traders interpreted the data as hawkish for the central bank monetary policy expectations. With that said, at April meeting of the Reserve Bank of Australia, they held rates and maintained a view that current policy will deliver sustainable growth and a return. Especially to the inflation target over the year. Expect them to maybe mention this jobs report during May’s interest rate decision.
The Australian dollar had already been rising as the US dollar weakened thanks to comments made by Donald Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. He said the greenback was “too strong.” This helped local Asian currencies, including the Aussie dollar to gain about 1.25 percent on the session.
