By Alex Ho
Investing.com - The U.S. dollar was down on Friday in Asia as concerns of the new coronavirus outbreak continued to weigh, while traders await the upcoming nonfarm payroll data due later in the day.
The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies was down 0.2% to 96.562 by 1:30 AM ET (05:30 GMT).
U.S. stocks and Asian equities jumped back into the sea of red today as disruptions to business from the coronavirus worsened.
The Asian Development Bank said today the coronavirus outbreak is set to trim global economic growth by 0.1% to 0.4%.
On the data front, the Labor Department will release the highly anticipated February jobs report at 8:30 AM ET.
“Non-farm payrolls rose by an unsustainably strong 225,000 in January. While this reflected the solid job market, it also likely was helped by unseasonably warm weather – which tends to have a disproportionately large impact in winter months,” David Berson, chief economist at Nationwide, said in an interview with Bloomberg. “As a result, we expect some payback in job gains for February. Still, the overall job market remains solid and weather was still a bit warmer than usual last month, as well.”
Meanwhile, The USD/JPY pair dropped 0.2% to 1.2953 as the pair neared a fresh six-month low.
The AUD/USD pair was little changed at 0.6610 as Australia’sretail turnover in January fell 0.3% month-on-month on a seasonally adjusted basis.