Dollar Falls for Third Day as Traders Await July Payrolls Report

(Bloomberg) -- The dollar fell for a third day versus the euro as investors waited for July payrolls data due later Friday, with traders bracing for the pair to hit the 1.20 mark.

The U.S. currency dropped against most of its 16 major peers, approaching its weakest level versus Europe’s shared currency since January 2015. Any weak data are likely to damage the dollar more than good data would be able to support it, Commerzbank AG strategists said in a note to clients. While attention is beginning to focus on the 1.20 mark for euro-dollar, to actually reach this level today the labor-market report would not only have to disappoint it would have to be a “disaster,” they wrote. 

• EUR/USD rises 0.1% to 1.1882, having touched 1.1910 on Aug. 2, highest since January 2015; euro set for fourth straight weekly gain, +1.1% since July 28
  • Nonfarm payrolls seen increasing 180k after 222k gain in June; jobless rate seen falling to 4.3% from 4.4%
• In terms of positioning, the euro looks widely owned by leveraged accounts while equity investors seem to be responding to the feedback loop from a strengthening currency to the economy, John Normand, head of currencies, commodities and international rates research at JPMorgan Chase & Co. said in a note to clients
  • For the U.S. bank, fixed-income investors, particularly central banks, are probably in the early stages of rethinking currency allocations
• EUR/CHF little changed at 1.15002; euro set for second straight weekly advance, after posting the biggest gain last week since the Swiss National Bank abandoned its currency cap more than two years ago
• Pound little changed at 1.3148, having slid the most in a month Thursday after Bank of England kept interest rates unchanged, while cutting the country’s economic growth forecast

--With assistance from Cormac Mullen

To contact the reporter on this story: Stefania Spezzati in London at sspezzati@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ven Ram at vram1@bloomberg.net, Keith Jenkins