GG now spends rainy days trading equities and currencies. He likes to use a combination of technical analysis and news flow to make trading decisions.
April Non-Farm Payrolls
The grand-daddy of all economic indicators, the US Employment Report, is due at 1330 on Friday. So, whether you are planning to trade or just want to sit back and enjoy the fireworks, here’s a preview.
For those of you not familiar with all the brouhaha attached to this particular data set, see Mr. FT’s finely crafted article here about why you might just have to ‘give a damn’. The NFP numbers invariably have quite a marked influence on bonds, equities and particularly the FX markets.
The ADP Employment Report released on Wednesday showed some surpring strength for an economy either teetering on, or already in, recession. If you believe them, ADP suggested that 10,000 jobs were created, instead of the 60,000 contraction in the workforce that the market was looking for. And the prior month was revised better too.
However, the ADP data is perceived as being as reliable as Victoria Beckham’s ‘disappearing’ chest; one month you can’t read about anything else in the paper and the next there’s absolutely nothing to talk about. Well this month’s ADP number will certainly get a few column inches of coverage-probably more than Mrs B. anyway!
As to the main event, analysts are looking for a decline in the workforce of around 75,000, with the Unemployment Rate to creep 0.1% higher to 5.2% of the workforce.
As this graph from data360.com shows, the US economy has lost jobs in each of the months since the turn of the year.
Now I’m not going to be around to trade this one, but for those of you who might fancy your chances-check for any revisions to last month’s data before pressing the ‘Trade’ button.
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