Investing.com - The Australian dollar was little changed against its U.S. counterpart on Monday, while the New Zealand dollar slipped lower as investors remained cautious ahead of this week’s U.S. presidential election.
AUD/USD held steady at 0.7679.
Markets were jittery after recent opinion polls have pointed to an increasingly uncertain outcome for the U.S. presidential election, rattling global financial markets and pressuring the dollar lower.
However, hopes for a Clinton win mounted after the FBI informed Congress over the weekend that it had "not changed its conclusions" on the private email server maintained by the Democratic candidate
The greenback also remained supported after the Labor Department said the U.S. economy added 161,000 jobs in October from the prior month and that the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.9%.
Economists had expected 175,000 new jobs and a jobless rate of 4.9%.
The data supported expectations for a December rate hike by the Federal Reserve.
NZD/USD shed 0.25% to trade at 0.7306, off Friday’s six-month highs of 0.7343.
The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback’s strength against a trade-weighted basket of six major currencies, was climbed 0.72% at 97.69, off Friday’s three-and-a-half week lows of 96.94.