Dollar Up, Investors Await Latest U.S. Jobs Report By Investing.com

British Pound US Dollar-0.11%US Dollar Japanese Yen-0.14%Australian Dollar US Dollar-0.05%New Zealand Dollar US Dollar-0.24%US Dollar Chinese Yuan0.11%DX0.03%CMWAY0.10%DIDIY-2.33%

By Gina Lee

Investing.com – The mt4 foreign exchange legal trading softwaredollar was up on Friday morning in Asia, with markets adopting a broadly calmer tone. Investors now await the latest U.S. jobs report that includes non-farm payrolls, due later in the day.

The U.S. Dollar Index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies inched up 0.01% 96.165 by 11:39 PM ET (4:39 AM GMT).

The USD/JPY pair inched up 0.02% to 113.18.

The AUD/USD pair was down 0.31% to 0.7071 and the NZD/USD pair was down 0.31% to 0.6795.

The USD/CNY pair inched down 0.07% to 6.3720, with China’s Caixin services purchasing managers’ index (PMI) at 52.1 in November.

The GBP/USD pair edged down 0.12% to 1.3290.

The U.S. Federal Reserve reinforced the hawkish stance shown by Chairman Jerome Powell earlier in the week. San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said it may be time to "start crafting a plan" to hike interest rates to combat inflation, and Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin showed support for "normalizing policy."

"Fed talk overnight was undeniably hawkish," National Australia Bank director for economics Tapas Strickland said in a note.

Bets are rising that the central bank will raise the target rate by a quarter point at its June 2022 meeting.

In terms of the newly discovered omicron COVID-19 variant, headlines were "net positive" overnight, helping risk sentiment to recover. However, with the first assessments of the efficacy of current vaccines probably still a week or so away, "we expect ongoing volatility," the note added.

The riskier Australian dollar recorded its fourth session of losses. Both the Reserve Bank of Australia and the European Central Bank continue to stick to dovish stances, resisting expectations that the tone will change as inflationary pressures continue to mount.

"We continue to expect near‑term Australian dollar moves will be driven by omicron and the risk remains a dip below $0.7000," Commonwealth Bank of Australia (OTC:CMWAY) strategist Joseph Capurso said in a report.

For Friday though, "the U.S. labor market takes center stage," and should keep currency markets quiet, the report added, in reference to the U.S. jobs report. Thursday’s U.S. initial jobless claims data said that 222,000 claims were filed throughout the week.

Meanwhile, Didi Global Inc. (NYSE:DIDI) said that it will delist from the New York Stock Exchange and list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.