Market In-Review: Stocks Continue to Gain on a Strong Nonfarm

■ Stocks increase as June’s Nonfarm indicates 287K jobs added to U.S. economy

■ S&P500 adds 1.5% Fri to a hair below the index’s all-time record high

■ Positive NFP momentum aids E.U. equity to continued gains

■ June minutes reveal a dovish Fed, eroding rate hike woes

■ Oil prices fluctuate amid DoE/API crude inventory reports

Markets celebrated yet another positive week, gaining on Friday’s strong U.S. Job market data. Optimism from the addition of no less than 287K jobs to the U.S. in June, according to the Nonfarm Payrolls report, quickly shifted to the S&P rising about 0.8% towards mid-day, as European markets were closing, then ending the day with a 1.5% gain. At a level of 2129.90 points, the index is now at its highest during the last year, and a few bp away from the current daily high of 2134.72, reached on May of last year. Response was fairly positive in Europe as well, with the DAX adding 2.2% and the FTSE 100 increasing 0.9%. Both, however, are still at some distance away from their all-time high.

In spite of the strong session in equity, bond yields in the U.S. remained somewhat bounded. The U.S. 10 year experienced some volatility around the release of the Nonfarm print, spiking from 1.39% to around 1.44%. This dissolved within half an hour or so, ending the day at a little over 1.36%. Indeed, the positive Nonfarm signal for the U.S. economy had the most convenient timing for a while now. On the one hand, the previous month’s report of an addition of just 38K jobs to the economy was a fairly alarming one. And with no serious monetary ammo available for the Fed, going into another recession in the U.S. now could prove fairly cumbersome. On the other hand, with the Brexit vote not too far behind us, an improvement in the U.S. economy is likely not to have an immediate impact on the Fed’s policy, namely, coerce it into another rate hike. Friday did see some increase for the timing of the Fed’s rate hike expectations, with those derived from the bond market now implying a little over 20% odds for a hike in December, versus about half of that before the release.

A post Brexit-vote market

The foundation for the positive market reaction of the Nonfarm data was laid not only in June’s Brexit vote, but also earlier during the week, as the Fed released the minutes of its rate announcement predating that vote. Inter alia, while the minutes referred to May’s weak Payrolls print as increasing uncertainty, they’ve also stated that it is prudent to wait for information that would allow to assess the consequences of the U.K. vote for global financial conditions…

Aside from the Nonfarm, much of the weekly trading momentum was governed by fairly rabid moves in oil prices. The Black Gold started the week on a rather weak note from around USD 49 per bbl at the start of the session to around USD 46 on Wednesday, amid American Petroleum Institute reports of an unusually large 6.7 m drawdown of crude inventories. On Thursday, however, the U.S. Department of Energy reported a much smaller decline in inventories at 2.2 m, which was quickly followed by a drop in prices to around the USD 45 level, at which they’ve remained until the end of the week.