FX round-up: Cable little changed, pound jumps versus Yen

Cable finished the session near the unchanged mark edging up by 0.04% to 1.2497 despite US dollar strength on the heels of a raft of upbeat data in the States.

However, sterling flew higher against the Japanese yen, strengthening by 1.5% to 142.64 as off 1910 GMT.

Dollar/yen jumped 1.54% to 114.15.

FX markets thus appeared to largely write-off the results of the Bank of England's 'stress' test results for lenders as well as the Financial Stability Report.

Instead, traders focused on a stronger-than-expected US ADP jobs report for the month of November, which revealed a 216,000 person increase in private payrolls (consensus: 160,000).

The latest US personal income figures referencing the month of October also printed ahead of forecasts, rising by 0.6% month (consensus: 0.4%), as did the Chicago manufacturing sector PMI, which rose from a reading of 50.6 to 57.6 (consensus: 52.0).

Acting as a backdrop, Dallas Fed chief Robert Kaplan said he continued to advocate removing some accomodation "in the near future".

When queried regarding the best approach to the newly-elected US President's policy proposales he recommended adopting a wait-and-see approach as some of them were still on the drawing board.

“I just want to wait and see what’s actually enacted and react to that. I don’t want to prejudge it. I think that is a better way to approach this,” Kaplan said.

Euro/dollar was again to be seen on the backfoot, sliding 0.51% to 1.0591.

In parallel, the Aussie was trading off by 1.18% versus the US dollar to 0.7395, alongside a 0.52% drop in the value of the Kiwi to 0.7089.

The Canadian dollar failed to get much of a boost from OPEC's decision to cut output, with the greenback sliding by 0.07% to 1.3423 against the currency of its northern neighbour.