Only yesterday I wrote improving employment situation in Australia. Economy down under added about 40,000 new jobs, in sharp contrast to situation in US, where employment continues to shrink. Today authorities in Canada released the Labour Force Survey. Our neighbor reported that employment increased for the second consecutive month, up 31,000 in September. At the same time, the unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percentage points to 8.4%, for the period. This would indicate that global economy is recovering broadly, if slowly, and Australia is not some exception. With any luck, other countries will start seeing the same effect, particularly the US, where unemployment is feared to top 10% before any improvement is visible.

This was good news for Canadian Dollar, or at least market players liked it. Loonie responded by staging impressive rally, leaving all other currencies in dust. It made yearly high in relation to US Dollar, reaching 1.0410 and might get even stronger before market closes for the weekend. Revisiting parity level looks more and more likely, especially if Canadian central bank chooses to raise interest rates during its next meeting, scenario that looks more plausible with every release of fundamental news. CAD also made healthy gains against AUD , the strongest currency of late. I mean, 160 pips in that cross during one day is a lot.

CAD-JPY moved even more, which was great news to me, given that was the cross I focused on yesterday. As a matter of fact all yen pairs were in play, but CAD-JPY was the one featured here with chart. I employed straddle strategy expecting breakout without much of directional conviction. Yen pairs created a short term congestion zone as if to rest before next move. This next move happened to be sell off of JPY, meaning the pairs moved up.

My entry was at 84.35, with 80 pips objective. Price made the run, reached target and continued even higher. By now it topped 86.00. Certainly appears that I should have gone long CAD across the board, rather than short JPY as I did, but no regrets. Yen trading also was just fine. Charts of all other crosses mentioned yesterday.

Due to the number of trades in one targeted currency, I had to spread them across few accounts. That helps to avoid disaster If I’m completely wrong. Not all trades lived up to full expectations, NZD-JPY came short of the target I settled for much smaller gain, but that’s OK. Over all it was a good day, following a rather tepid week.
On an unrelated note… Being astronomy enthusiast, I follow with interest all news related to space. Recently it was NASA searching for water on the Moon. Technique used was rather unorthodox, they decided to “bomb” our satellite, as press put it. Well, in reality it was crushing of the spacecraft on lunar surface. I was really looking forward to watching it happen. Unfortunately, due to some camera malfunction not  much was visible. I can only hope something is salvaged and we’ll be treated to at least a few spectacular images over the weekend. Can’t wait.

Mike K.