Getting ready for the NFP, OPEC & trading on the news

6. Dez. 2019

It is worth noting statistics from the Eurozone that was published on Thursday. On the one hand, as we predicted, Eurozone GDP came out better than expected (+ 0.2% q / q with a forecast + 0.1% q / q). On the other hand, retail sales failed (-0.6% m / m with a forecast -0.5% m / m), and industrial orders in Germany unexpectedly declined (-0.4% m / m with a forecast + 0.4% m / m). However, this did not prevent the euro from strengthening yesterday.

Friday promises to be an exceptionally busy day for financial markets. First, official statistics on the US labour market will be published. Secondly, the results of an expanded OPEC meeting will be summarized. Also, we are waiting for data on the labour market of Canada.

Let's start with an indicator that could potentially trigger volatility in the financial markets. We are talking about NFP. The forecasts, in our opinion, are too optimistic. Although + 180K jobs - almost the average figure of the indicator for 2019, current trends in the US economy show that + 180K is a bit overstated. The fact is that the non-farm payrolls: 180K+ is obliged to the start of the year when in January and February the indicator exceeded + 300K. But such figures have not been shown for a long time so without these two periods, the average in 2019 is less than 150K. 150K seems to us much closer to current realities, and in light of the weak employment rate from ADP published on Wednesday (+67 thousand jobs with a forecast +135 thousand), a figure below + 100K will not surprise us.

So our recommendation for the dollar (in the light of our expectations from the NFP) is to sell the dollar.

Note that the indicator's output between + 120K - + 180K may be completely ignored by the markets.

Concerns about the demarche of Saudi Arabia at the OPEC meeting become irrelevant. On the contrary, there is increasing talk throughout the markets about a possible increase in the volume of reduction in oil production under OPEC + from the current 1.2 million bpd to 1.6 million bpd. However, even if such a decision is made in the oil market, nothing will change - OPEC countries are now extracting less than is stipulated by the agreements.

Our position on oil is unchanged so far - oil growth is a great opportunity for asset sales.

Today promises to be over-volatile for the USDCAD due to the simultaneous publication of labour market data from both the United States and Canada. Given the uncertainty related to the data, our recommendation for working with a pair today is to trade pending orders. Before the data is released, we place pending orders of the buy stop and sell stop type at 20-30 pips from the current price at that time. And then we just wait. That will almost certainly provoke the formation of a strong unidirectional movement, you can earn on.