It’s That Day Of The Month Again! NFP Report

And here we are on the first Friday of May…the NFP day again! The report is going to be released at 12:00 PM GMT and the expectation is of 215K jobs to be added. This refers to the number of jobs added to the economy in the month of April 2016. The previous reading (for March) was of 245K.

The NFP will come after a set of economic data that pointed on Wednesday towards an almost absent economic growth for the US. ADP’s employment report, which stands as an early estimate for official labor reports, was showing a rise of 156K jobs in the US private sector for the month of April. Although the positive figure, the amount was less than the expected 205K hike. The labor efficiency indicator fell by 1% on a yearly basis for the first quarter of 2016, marking the 4th quarter of declining efficiency in the last year and a half. The positive side of the release was that the US trade deficit went down in March, reaching $40.4 billion and hitting the lowest level since last year’s February. Also, ISM’s (Institute of Supply Management) April non-manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers’ index) went up to post the highest level since November 2015 at 55.7 points.

Also on Wednesday, the activity in UK’s construction sector continued to slow down in the first, second quarter of the year while the figures are posting way under the forecast. The CIPS/Markit manufacturing PMI for the British economy posted worst-than-expected figures, coming in at 52.0 for the month of April. This represents a sharp drop from March’s 54.2 and is also under the expected 54.0 reading.

Moving over to Thursday, the AUD/USD pair resumed its downtrend as the USD demand went up. Aussie was pushed close to the 0.7515 key resistance level as overnight data releases were better than the expected results for the Australian economy – despite of the recent CPI (Consumer Price Index) results for the first quarter and the RBA’s (Reserve Bank of Australia) concerns for economic growth along with the mixed employment data, which forced the bank to cut the official monetary policy rate. The March retail sales for Australia came in 0.4% higher on a monthly basis versus an expected 0.3% growth and versus last month’s flat. For what regards the trade balance, the figures printed -2,163 million AUD versus an expected deficit of 2,900 million AUD and a previous 3,410 million AUD deficit.

The crude oil prices went up about 2% yesterday, reversing the losses from last week when a raging wildfire near Fort McMurray, Alberta, trimmed Canada’s output for approximately 1/3 of the total production. Adding to this, last week was also a grim period for Libya due to the street violence bursts which favored short-term supply concerns over the long-term supply glut.