President Trump has been publicly stating that the Fed should be cutting rates faster after Friday's strong jobs data, but the pressure will almost certainly be in vain.
- Friday saw the release of stronger-than-expected jobs data in the USA, with non-farm payrolls coming in at 117k while only 138k new jobs were expected. Average Hourly Earnings growth was also lower than expected, at 0.2% month-on-month. After the negative Advance GDP print earlier in the week, Trump had a fairly strong case to start calling again for rate cuts, and he reiterated his call a few hours ago while stating that Fed Chair Powell is safe in his role until 2026. Trump has no real power to fire Powell anyway.
- Stock markets are mixed today, with Asian markets mostly higher, while US equity index futures are trading lower off-hours since markets opened this week in Asia.
- Bitcoin briefly broke above the key resistance level at $95,038 but has again fallen back to trade below the big round number at $95,000. We may eventually see a decisive bullish breakout, which could lead to a test of the record price made in December not far from $110,000.
- The Forex market has seen the New Zealand Dollar as the strongest major currency and the Swiss as the weakest one since today's Tokyo open, putting the NZD/CHF currency cross in focus. The EUR/USD currency pair remains in a long-term bullish trend and most analysts will see it that way as long as the price holds up above the key support level at $1.1241. The US Dollar has lost some ground so far today.
- There will be releases later today of Swiss CPI and US ISM Services PMI data.
- It is a public holiday today in the UK, so Forex markets are likely to be quiet until New York opens.