By William L. Watts and Sarah Turner, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch)—The dollar held its ground Friday as currency traders moved to the sidelines ahead of the release of potentially pivotal U.S. data on nonfarm payrolls for April.
The ICE dollar index DXY +0.14% , which measures the greenback against a basket of six other major currencies, stood at 79.274, little changed from 79.213 in late North American trading Thursday.
According to economists surveyed by MarketWatch, the U.S. gained 163,000 jobs last month, and the unemployment rate remained flat at 8.2%. The largest global economy added just 120,000 jobs in March. Read U.S. data preview.
The nonfarm-payrolls figure has “the power to set the tone for how markets, and the dollar in particular, trade for the rest of the month. The weaker March [payrolls] report stopped the rally in [dollar/yen] in its tracks, for example,” said Kathleen Brooks, research director at Forex.com, in a note.
Brooks said a figure below 200,000—the level needed to bring down the unemployment rate--would make prospects for further quantitative-easing by the Federal Reserve more likely, putting pressure on the dollar.
The dollar USDJPY +0.10% bought 80.26 yen on Friday, compared with ÂĄ80.21 in the previous session.
The euro EURUSD -0.15% slipped to $1.3129, off from $1.3151 in late trading Thursday.
Earlier Friday, the euro-zone composite purchasing managers' index for April fell more than expected, pointing to a deepening contraction in private-sector activity. Euro-zone PMI.
Politics are also in focus as President Nicolas Sarkozy faces off against Sociaist challenger François Hollande in France’s presidential runoff vote on Sunday, when voters in Greece go to the polls in parliamentary elections. Read about the weekend elections.
Local elections will also take place in Italy, while the small German state of Schleswig-Holstein will hold a regional election.
The British pound GBPUSD -0.04% traded at $1.6171, down slightly from Thursday.
And the Australian dollar AUDUSD -0.25% slipped to $1.0244, down slightly from $1.0258, as the Reserve Bank of Australia downgraded its growth forecasts, just days after the central bank cut its policy interest rate by an unexpectedly large half a percentage point. Read more on RBA forecasts.
