Wall Street meanwhile opened steady, buoyed by confirmation via the jobs market that the American economy is firing on all cylinders, they added.

The US non-farm payroll for September came in at 134,000 new jobs, far fewer than analysts had expected, but August figures were revised up, making this "far from a terrible employment number", said Craig Erlam, an analyst at Oanda.

"This is actually another very good report that other countries will be extremely envious of," he said.