Tag Archive: U.S. Nonfarm Payrolls

Mixed Dollar as Eyes Turn to FOMC

The US dollar is broadly mixed as attention turns to the FOMC statement later today.   The most important development has been the unexpectedly large oil inventory build reported by the API ahead of today's government estimate.   The 11.4 mln barrel build is the largest in nearly two decades.  To put the rise in perspective, consider …

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Week Ahead: Picking Up the Pieces

Whatever force had gripped the global capital markets since the start of the year has been broken.   This simple characterization is rich.  It is not clear if or what macroeconomic considerations were driving the markets.  The markets had taken the unsurprising Fed rate hike in mid-December in stride. The dramatic moves in the market did not …

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Tomorrow’s News Today

There are three important economic events tomorrow.    The UK will release its December employment report and November weekly earnings data.  The US reports December CPI.  The Bank of Canada meets, and is widely expected to be the first centra...

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Dollar: State of Play

The start of a new calendar year does not necessarily mean the rise of new market drivers.   In fact, the key issues investors face at the start of 2016 are the same that dominated Q4 2015.   These issues center around pace of Fed tightening, the outlook for the world's second largest economy and its … Continue reading »

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2015 Draws to a Close

Many financial centers in Asia and Europe are on holiday today, and those that are open, are experiencing a minimum of activity.  Turnover may pick up briefly in the North American morning, but conditions will remain thin and only those who need to transact will.   The US reports weekly jobless claims and the Chicago PMI.   … Continue reading...

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Seven Events Next Week that will Shape the Investment Climate

The week ahead is among the most important of the year.  Rarely is there such a confluence of events in a short period that will have far-reaching implications for investors that are known ahead of time and have been discussed so extensively. ?...

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The Decline and Fall of Silver Backwardation 11 Oct, 2015

The gold price moved up $18. However, the silver price moved up 60 cents which is a much bigger percentage. The silver community is getting pretty excited. A market trend will often begin when a small number of traders learn something new. As they begin buying (or selling), the price begins to move. Others become aware of the ....

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Fundamentals,FX,Gold and CHF: Week November 4 to November 8

Fundamentals with highest importance: The U.S. GDP release for Q3, showed that despite the recent U.S. critique with Germany, the Americans are trying to follow the successful Germans: for the first time since Q1/2012 and Q2/2011 exports rose more than imports. GDP was up 2.8%, but not driven by consumption, it was mostly helped by …

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Fast CHF and Gold Price Movements

Our CHF and Gold News Bar on our home page explains daily CHF and gold price movements based on the most important fundamental indicators in a few sentences. Keep in mind that the only Swiss fundamental data that is able to move the CHF must come from the SNB and from Swiss inflation data – … Continue reading »

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Fundamentals, FX, Gold and CHF: Week October 21 to 25

Major Fundamental Events The week contained a lot of important fundamental events, in particular Non-Farm Payrolls and preliminary “flash” PMI readings.   Highest importance for FX rates Non-Farm Payrolls (NFPs) weakened to 148K, private NFPs to 126K, both against 180K expected. Especially the private NFPs were disappointing. The decrease in the unemployment rate from 7.3% …

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Fundamentals, Gold and FX Movements, Week September 30 to October 4

Our weekly summary of fundamental news on FX that aims to explains price movements, with particular emphasis on the possibly biggest mysteries: the gold price (GLD) and the Swiss franc (FXF) . The clear winner of the week was the Aussie, supported by a positive PMI and positive news from the RBA. In the previous …

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The “Sell in May, Come Back in October” Effect and the 19 Fortune-Tellers of the FOMC

The U.S. economy regularly improves between October and April, this year additionally fueled by "unlimited" quantitative easing, weaker gas prices and higher competitiveness thanks to a stronger Chinese yuan and weaker Asian economies.   Update 2013: The Case-Shiller index continued to climb in April 2013; it became clear that this year the "Sell in May" …

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Net Speculative Positions, Global Stock Markets, Week October 29

  Submitted by Mark Chandler, from marctomarkets.com   The US Dollar Index reached its best level in more than six weeks on Friday.  Yet it managed to only close a couple of ticks higher, as if warning short-term participants against ideas that a breakout is at hand.  This also appears to be the message of the …

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Conspiracy? Why the Jobs Report Was not Cooked, but simply Flawed

Conspiracy ? Huge Differences Between the Payrolls Report and the Household Survey based on the extracts of Robert Oak, Noslaves.com and his blog on Economic Populist It’s a conspiracy! The BLS is trying to swing the election! They’re cookin’ de books! By now you’ve seen the claims, accusations and mumblings by the pundits, press, twitter and blogosphere. So …

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FX Technical Outlook, Net Speculative Positions, Global Markets, week August 27

Submitted by Mark Chandler, from marctomarkets.com   There are two main drivers behind the price action in the foreign exchange market and they will likely persist in the days ahead.  First, there continues to be position adjustment ahead of the what promises to be eventful few weeks.  Second, the release of the minutes from the August 1 …

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The “Sell in May, come back in October” effect and its equivalent for the SNB

  The "Sell in May, come back in October" effect It is the same seasonal anomaly nearly every year: The statistically flawed (see here and here) Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) report delivers some good winter readings with 200K new jobs, this time additionally fuelled by a weather effect; biased data that let hard-core Keynesian policy makers doubt Okun's law. Consequently the stock markets rally …

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Forget Non-Farm Payrolls, Take US Personal Disposable Income as Lead Economic Indicator

The unreliable Non-Farm Payrolls has far too much importance  Interesting to see that markets needed two relatively bad NFPs to really believe that their main indicators, the “Non-Farm Payroll” reports were strongly biased in January and February by a positive weather effect. HFT algorithms that highly influence stock market prices, are not able to take …

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EUR/CHF, A History, The Game Changes: April 2012

EUR/GBP: If You Want To Know Why Its Falling, Have A Look At The SNB Thanks Goose for the reminder that the SNB released figures on its FX reserves holdings and these showed a marked increase in GBP holdings. This has been a constant theme over the last few weeks/months, the SNB buys EUR/CHF in the marketplace … Continue reading »

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