• Last week saw most currencies rise against the US dollar with the greatest medium-term strength in the Australian and New Zealand dollars. It is too early to be confident of a change in momentum this week but since the weekly open the US dollar has been bid (UDN).

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• Stock markets are generally higher and today’s Asian session saw strong rises in Japanese and Chinese stock indices, especially in Japan where political developments are at the heart of the current move (FXY, CYB).

• US non-farm payrolls came in at only 235k net new jobs created compared to the 720k which had been generally expected by the market. This has raised fears that the Federal Reserve could abandon plans to begin tapering its QE program but most analysts expect that this will only delay the implementation of tapering.

• Tuesday’s Asian session will bring the release of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s rate statement, which might impact the Australian dollar (FXA).

• Last week saw the second consecutive weekly fall in global new confirmed coronavirus cases after over 2 months of weekly rises, suggesting the current wave driven by the delta variant may have peaked.

• It is estimated that 40.3% of the world’s population has had at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccination.

• Total confirmed new coronavirus cases worldwide stand at over 221.1 million with an average case fatality rate of 2.07%.

• The rate of new coronavirus infections appears to now be increasing most quickly in Albania, Australia, Austria, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Canada, Costa Rica, Estonia, Ethiopia, Germany, Latvia, Mongolia, Norway, Philippines, Serbia, Slovenia, the U.S., and Vietnam.