Dollar Nurses Wounds ahead of the NFP

The U.S. dollar has been on the defensive all week and in to the Asian trade session today. Traders are nervous about mixed trade negotiation headlines between the United States and China.

Traders are also worried about the overall health of the U.S. economy after a week of soft ISM PMIs and a miss with the ADP labor report on Wednesday.

However, the British pound is standing tall as polls continue to indicate that incumbent Prime Minister Boris Johnson will win a commanding victory on December 12.

Safe haven currencies like the Japanese yen and Swiss franc are firm as trade talks between the United States and China seem to be falling apart again.

The euro has held onto gains against the U.S. dollar seen overnight. The EUR/USD currency exchange rate is trading at 1.1104 after gaining 0.8 percent so far this week. The USD/JPY Forex market is also trading lower as the yen is seeing safe haven inflows.

The dollar index, which measures the U.S. currency against six other Forex units, has fallen every day this week and is on course to lose one percent for the week.

Dollar Traders Wait on today’s Non-Farm Payroll Labor Report

Later today, during the North American trade session, all eyes are on labor data out of the United States.  At 1:30 pm GMT, the U.S. will publish the highly anticipated non-farm payroll (NFP) labor report. This labor data release will include the unemployment rate, monthly hourly wages and the labor participation rate.

On Wednesday, the ADP non-farm employment change, showed that private firms added only 67K new jobs in November. This was well below market expectations and puts today’s NFP under added pressure.

The NFP is expected to show that U.S. economy added 189K new jobs in November. The unemployment rate is expected to come in at 3.6 percent.

At 3 pm GMT, traders will get to see preliminary consumer sentiment data, from the University of Michigan.