Australia: The AUD has opened firmly in the mid 0.9100's this morning after benefitting from the US payroll data released on Friday that saw a fall of 54k in jobs as compared to the expected decline of 105k jobs.

Although on the surface, it would appear this figure is nothing to get excited about, the market interpreted it as a positive result, since private payrolls rose by 60k alone and there were some positive revisions to previous month's figures.

Hourly wages also rose by 0.3%. The census workers temporarily employed by the US Government fell by 121k. The unemployment rate increased by 0.1% to 9.6% as more people looked for work.

This better than expected data fired up the equity markets with the Dow up 1.2% to 10,448, the S&P 500 up 1.3% to 1,105 and the NASDAQ up a further 1.5% to 2234. European indices were all up as well due to the US figures.

US treasuries rose in yield with 2 year maturities up by 2bps to a whopping 0.51% pa yield and the 10 year debt up by 7 bps to 2.70%. Commodities were little changed with base metals mixed and gold fell a touch to US$1,247 ounce. All soft commodities rose with wheat up the most (4%).

There is likely to be little movement on currency markets due to the US Labor Day holiday today.

In Australia, a survey of job ads is released this morning along with some inflation data. Tomorrow afternoon the RBA will look at interest rates and we expect there to be no change in the cash rate.

Finally, we expect there will be a resolution by the three independents early this week as to whether they will support the incumbent Labor government or the Coalition opposition.

Majors: With a more bullish tone set on Friday evening with the US jobs data the EUR and GBP both rose against the USD and we saw improved cross rates on the AUDEUR and AUDGBP.

PMI August forecast data on Friday in the Eurozone and Germany was slightly weaker than expected and tempered the bullishness out of the USA.

On Saturday morning a 7.1 earthquake hit the 348,000 people of Christchurch, New Zealand with approximately NZD2bn of damage inflicted and fortunately no deaths reported. The NZD has not been affected by this disaster.