SGstocksandshares (SGSAS): What Numbers To Note This Friday?

04 February 2016

What Numbers To Note This Friday?

When the Federal Reserve hiked key interest rates in December, it was essentially on the basis of the strength of the U.S. labor market and the belief that an economy at full employment would inevitably start generating levels of inflation consistent with the central bank's goals. Since then, of course, there's been a heightened level of global market volatility and increased concern about the economy.

But for now, U.S. labor is holding up. Initial Jobless Claims have ticked increased a bit this year but not to an alarming degree. The U.S. labor market will be put to the test this week, however. Today we get the ADP employment report, while Thursday brings the latest initial claims number. Finally, on Friday we get Non-Farm Payrolls, which are expected to come in at 190,000, with the unemployment rate staying flat at 5 percent. Given the importance of labor data for the Fed, the next few days should be very interesting.

Lastly, ISM results were still weak compared to last quarter. Thus in a simplified manner of what happened last night:

USD weakened
Crude oil up (even though the inventories results are in exccess of 7.8m barrels This is partly due to weakened USD too)
US indexes went up as the possibility of rate hikes is more and more unlikely.

Friday to look out for Non farm payroll and unemployment rate, which I believe will be pretty robust.