Forex news for North American trading on August 5, 2021
It’s a day closer to the key US jobs report tomorrow and it was evident in some of the price action. Risk focused traders might be “waiting this one out”. When you expect 850K new jobs, and you have a “proxy” like the ADP job report come in at 330K, it can make some traders/a lot of traders sit on the sidelines until the details are known.
A preview of the expectations for the US jobs report can be FOUND HERE.
Also released tomorrow at 8:30 AM ET, will be the Canada jobs report which is expected to show a jobs change of 148.5K vs the oversize gain of 230.7K last month. The unemployment rate is expected to fall to 7.4% from 7.8%.
For most of the North American session in the forex market today, the price action was non trending/up and down. A ranking of the strongest and the weakest shows the CAD is the strongest, while the JPY is the weakest. The USD moved higher versus the JPY (helped by stronger stocks and higher yields). The greenback fell vs the GBP, CAD, and AUD.
Jobless claims today came in their expectations at 385K versus 384K estimate. The US trade deficit came in at its largest ever. Feds Waller reiterated his expectations at the taper may start sooner than expected. Europe indices ended higher with the exception of the UK’s FTSE 100 which fell modestly.
In other markets today:
- Spot gold felt $-7.4 or -0.41% $1804.10. The price of gold spiked up to $1831 yesterday, but came back down as the dollar moved higher. Today, the traders seem to want to move the price back toward the neutral $1800 level. So it did.
- Spot silver is trading down $0.22 -0.86% $25.13
- WTI crude oil futures moved higher by about $1.11 today or 1.63% $69.14. The pair rebound modestly after getting close to its 100 day moving average at $67.10 (it was within about $0.80 today at the lows).
- The price of bitcoin is back above the $40,000 level at $40,989.
US stocks were not afraid of the jobs report as all the broader major indices moved higher. The Russell 2000 of small-cap index played a little catch up with a 1.8% oversized gain today. The moves higher in the broader indices saw both the NASDAQ index and S&P index close at new all time highs. Below is a summary of the highs and lows and changes for the three major indices today.
In the US interest rate market, yields moved higher with the benchmark 10 year yield back above the 1.200 level at 1.225%. The two – 10 year spread one the bit to 102.5 from 100.02 at the end of trading yesterday.