EUROPEAN SESSION
In the European session, we don’t have much on the agenda other than the Italian Industrial Production data which is never a market-moving release and won’t change anything for the ECB anyway. The price action might remain rangebound into the US NFP report later in the day, but I also wouldn’t be surprised to see some hedging into the risk event after Trump yesterday mentioned that “employment numbers are really good”.
AMERICAN SESSION
In the American session, all eyes will be on the January US NFP report. The consensus sees 70K jobs added in January vs 50K in December, with the Unemployment Rate staying unchanged at 4.4%. The Average Hourly Earnings Y/Y is expected at 3.8% vs 3.6% prior, while the M/M measure is seen at 0.3% vs 0.3% prior.
With this report we will also get the benchmark revisions to establishment survey payrolls for the period through April 2025. The final revision is expected to be smaller than the preliminary 911K decline, but overall revisions may show 2025 payroll growth averaging closer to 20K–30K rather than the currently reported 49K. There’s been too much focus on this revision and my personal view is that nobody should care about it. That’s history. What matters is how the labour market is doing now and how it might perform in the next 6-12 months.
The most important data should be the unemployment rate. The Fed estimated that given the lower labour supply the US needs to add like 30 to 50K jobs per month to keep the unemployment rate stable. These are just estimates, it can be lower or higher, so the unemployment rate should give a “clearer” picture.
CENTRAL BANK SPEAKERS
10:20 GMT/05:20 ET – ECB’s Cipollone (neutral – voter)15:00 GMT/10:00 ET – Fed’s Schmid (hawkish – non voter)15:15 GMT/10:15 ET – Fed’s Bowman (dovish – voter)17:00 GMT/12:00 ET – ECB’s Schnabel (hawkish – voter)21:00 GMT/16:00 ET – Fed’s Hammack (hawkish – voter)
This article was written by Giuseppe Dellamotta at investinglive.com.