A lull in bond trading stretched into Asia trade on Friday, but investors may not last the day as investors waited on US jobs data that could add to the case for keeping interest rates high for some time.
Sliding oil prices have also provided some relief to the markets, with Brent crude futures at $84.50 a barrel, some $13 or 13.5 percent cheaper than last week's 11-month high.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan has surged 0.8 percent. Tokyo's Nikkei was flat and currency markets were steady with the dollar just off recent highs as traders looked to the labor data for guidance.
Although the US economy has been mixed lately, markets have been especially wary that signs of resilience could justify holding rates elevated for longer or hiker interest rates, and 10-year US Treasury yields are up 55 basis points in five weeks.
Economists polled by Reuters expected 170,000 US jobs to be added last month and that the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.7 percent.
It's hard to disentangle where people are sitting, but the market will not want to see a strong number for sure, said Jason Wong, a trade strategist at BNZ in Wellington.
That would probably result in another round of bond selling and send the dollar higher thanks to both rising yields and the safety factor of holding greenbacks.
The dollar's 12-week run of gains against the euro is a record, with the common currency, at $1.0542, pinned close to an 11-month low. The dollar index is set to equal a record 12-week winning streak in 2014, resulting in a new six-week streak.
In contrast, the beleaguered yen has shown little of a fight since a sudden surge in the Japanese currency during London afternoon on Tuesday stoked speculation authorities had intervened.
Japanese money market data showed no anomalies of a kind that might have been expected were there a large purchase of yen, suggesting there was no direct intervention in spot trade. The move, however, was eye-catching enough to keep traders on their guard.
The yen was at 148.5 per dollar at the end of the day.
Ten-year yields were held at 4.72 percent. After nine days of losses, Gold was steady at $1,822 an ounce, driven by rising global bond yields.
SocGen strategist Kit Juckes said the data in question is not available for US Treasury supply and CPI data.