The Japanese Yen closed at its weakest level since 12 December 2005 at 119.00, just under major resistance. The release of the US employment data had moved it from 118.60 as the US Dollar was universally bought by eager currency traders. It would need a close above 119.40 to give forex traders the confidence to head for the 2005 hi level of 121.40. With Bank of Japan (BOJ) Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) still in place and likely to remain so for some time, it is hard to see where any sustained Japanese Yen strength in the near term, could come from. If the USD/JPY were to find a close below 117.40 then fx traders would look at major support at 115.50 as a first target.
Likewise it is very hard to find a bullish argument for the British pound against the US Dollar. It failed to recover any lost ground after the European close. Once traders had forced the GBP/USD below the support at 1.7345 on the release of the US employment data, there was very little support before 1.7250. Stops took cable down to 1.7230 before steadying below the 1.7275. It closed the North American trading session at 1.7265 , a loss of 100 pips on the day. The next major support below is probably the early January low at 1.7190.

The Canadian Dollar closed the North American trading session at 1.1610 a loss on the day of only around 30 pips. This was a very good performance in the face of falling commodity prices, profit taking after a long bull run, and a strengthening dollar on employment data. Canada had it own employment data released which showed that the jobless rate fell to 6.4 percent last month from 6.6 percent in January. The Canadian economy added 24,700 jobs, boosted by a sharp rise in part-time jobs, the forecast had been for a rise of 20k and a 6.6 pct rate. Again the devil was in the detail, despite the headlines the statistics contained the biggest drop in full-time jobs since July 2004.. The loonie traded to 1.1650 on the release of the US data its lowest against the US Dollar since the 19th January. If we were to see close above 1.1640 then 1.1750 and 1.1800 would be traders targets. It is hard to see the Canadian Dollar making too much progress while gold and oil prices are under pressure.
Much of the focus next week will be on US data showing Retail Sales on Tuesday and Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Thursday.