Foreign exchange market. Asian session: The Australian dollar gained

(Time/ Region/ Event/ Period/ Previous/ Forecast/ Actual)

01:30 Australia NAB Quarterly Business Confidence Quarter I 2 0

01:35 Japan Manufacturing PMI April 50.3 50.8 49.7

01:45 China HSBC Manufacturing PMI April 49.6 49.4 49.2

03:00 New Zealand Credit Card Spending March 5.8% 5.2%

The greenback is becoming a drag on the U.S. bond market. The currency is heading for its first losing month since June, according to the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index. Why is that a problem for bonds? It threatens to curb demand from investors outside the U.S, who own about half of the securities in the world's biggest debt market.

Treasuries due in a year and longer have fallen 0.3 percent in April when accounting for changes in both the bonds and the currency, based on data compiled by Bloomberg and the European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies. The decline puts them among the 10 worst-performing sovereign debt securities.

While U.S. job gains topped 200,000 in January and February, they slowed to 126,000 in March. Retail sales, gross-domestic-product growth and inflation are other weak spots in the economy.

EUR / USD: during the Asian session the pair fell to $ 1.0690

GBP / USD: during the Asian session the pair traded in the range of $ 1.5010-30

USD / JPY: during the Asian session the pair traded near the level of Y120.00