The Australian dollar jumped against its New Zealand peer as the employment report from Australia was much better than the data from New Zealand. The Aussie retreated against the Japanese yen amid the risk-negative market sentiment and was flat versus the greenback .
Australia’s employment grew by 10,700 jobs in October from the preceding month, while analysts have thought it would be little changed. The unemployment rate stayed at 5.4 percent. The situation with employment in New Zealand was completely different. New Zealand’s employment rate fell 0.4 percent in the third quarter of 2012, instead of rising 0.3 percent as was expected, and the unemployment rate climbed as much as 0.5 percentage points to 7.3 percent.
Higher-yielding currencies were falling against safer ones and the Aussie was not immune to the trend. Traders had mixed feeling about the outcome of the US presidential election and Greece is still an unresolved issue for the European Union. That did not allow the Australian currency to profit from the favorable fundamental data.
AUD/NZD rose from 1.2709 to 1.2731 as of 5:11 GMT today, reaching the highest level since September 13. AUD/USD was flat at 1.0404. AUD/JPY fell from 83.22 to 83.09.
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