Mexican peso having fiesta over Trump's debate showing

The Mexican peso had a fiesta in Asian trading Tuesday after Donald Trump was seen as coming off worse in his debate with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The beleaguered unit soared against the dollar -- bouncing off a record low reached before the highly anticipated showdown -- as markets gave Clinton the edge in the first of three head-to-head US presidential debates before the November election.

The peso rallied over two percent to sit at 19.4391 against the dollar, coming off an all-time low of 19.9333.

The unit had slumped before the debate as the prospect of a Trump presidency fanned concerns over the neighbours' political and economic ties.

The billionaire Republican candidate's campaign kicked off with an anti-Mexico slant, as he referred to migrants as "killers and rapists".

Trump has vowed to cut off billions of dollars in remittances sent by migrants to Mexico to make their country pay for a massive wall along the border.

And he pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement between the US, Mexico and Canada if he wins.

"Given that the Mexican peso has been the most sensitive currency to the US election outcome, it took centre stage as the market reacted to the US presidential debate," Khoon Goh, the head of regional research at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group in Singapore, told Bloomberg News.

Last week Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto partly blamed Trump for the peso's fall.

The "position that the candidate Trump has had about Mexico, and this uncertain scenario about the outcome of the US election causes this uncertainty about Mexico", he told Radio Formula.