It’s no surprise to see the US dollar sizzling today after non-farm payrolls rose by 353,000 jobs compared to 1800,000 expected. It’s the strongest month of jobs gains in a year and raises big doubts about whether the Federal Reserve will be cutting rates anytime soon.
USD/JPY is a big beneficiary, up 180 pips to 148.21 today. The pair had fallen every day this week until today but with the big gain, it’s now higher than it was at Monday’s open.
USDJPY daily
It’s a similar story across the board with the dollar up 60-180 pips.
The Fed blackout ends today so the next thing the market will be looking for is commentary from Fed officials on what the strong jobs report means to them or if they’re more focused on (potentially?) falling inflation.
Surely this report will give them some pause about cutting rates in March and the market now sees just a 20% chance of that, with a May cut around 90%.
On Monday, we get the latest ISM services report. It was surprisingly strong in January but that may have been a seasonal quirk (similar to in 2023) so my guess is that could surprise to the upside as well, further boosting USD/JPY and the dollar more broadly.