Currencies Round up

Currencies: US jobs news boosts dollar

Better US economic data last week culminating with the first drop in the rate of unemployment for a year sent the dollar higher against a basket of currencies.

The dollar had been under almost relentless pressure in recent months ofn fears for the economy.

But news that 247,000 jobs disappeared in July, far less than the 320,000 predicted by analysts and almost half the 467,000 reported in June, may have stemmed the tide. Unemployment overall fell of 9.4%, down from 9.5% last month.

The much better than expected figures sparked a sharp pullback in the Yen, while the Euro was one of the weakest performers and broke out of its recent tight range versus the dollar with a fall of roughly 200 points. Sterling rallied against the euro, Swiss franc, and Japanese yen.

GBP	AUD	CAD	JPY	EUR	CHF	USD
GBP	1.0000	1.9864	1.8061	162.2030	1.1739	1.8036	1.6676
AUD	0.5034	1.0000	0.9092	81.6565	0.5910	0.9080	0.8395
CAD	0.5537	1.0998	1.0000	89.8066	0.6500	0.9986	0.9233
JPY	0.0062	0.0122	0.0111	1.0000	0.0072	0.0111	0.0103
EUR	0.8518	1.6921	1.5385	138.1705	1.0000	1.5364	1.4206
CHF	0.5544	1.1013	1.0014	89.9311	0.6509	1.0000	0.9246
USD	0.5997	1.1911	1.0831	97.2650	0.7039	1.0816	1.0000