(Financial Post) The safe-haven yen fell to two-week lows against the dollar on Thursday, as the United States and Iran moved away from an all-out conflict, prompting investors to take on more risk and shift focus to an upcoming U.S.-China trade deal and a U.S. non-farm payrolls report.
“After yesterday’s press conference and after it looked like Iran was not trying to escalate things, we are now getting back to the status quo that we saw before the Iran situation,” said John Doyle, vice president of dealing and trading, at Monex Inc in Washington.
Market participants are also looking ahead to Friday’s U.S. non-farm payrolls report, with forecasts of 164,000 new jobs in December, from 266,000 the previous month.
“The forecast of 160,000 jobs or so is not a big number so I think there is a little room for an upside surprise,” said Monex’ Doyle. “I will be looking at November’s number of 266,00 – whether that will be revised.”
