With an important non-farm jobs report on the horizon – it is, after all, a potentially rate-cutting month for the Fed – the European markets struggled to shake their Independence Day hangover on Friday.
The FTSE found itself trickling below 7600 as the session got underway, a solid chuck of red in its mining sector contributing to a 10-ish point decline. The DAX, meanwhile, lost 0.1%, with the CAC holding above 5600 despite a 0.2% slide.
Sterling, which has been shaken this week by a recession-threatening trio of PMIs, was largely unchanged. Against the dollar it sat just under $1.258, a 2-week-plus nadir, while against the euro a 0.1% increase failed to remove it from the 6-month low ballpark it has been loitering in for the last few days.
Looking ahead to the non-farm jobs report this afternoon, and the state of the update will likely dictate whether or not the Dow Jones breaches 27000 when the bell rings on Wall Street. Analysts are expecting wage growth to creep up from 0.2% to 0.3%, with the unemployment rate forecast to hold at 3.6%. As for the headline non-farm figure, it is estimated to bounce from a disappointing 75k in May to 162k in June. Though many believe a Fed rate cut in July is already locked on, Friday’s jobs data could help sway the central bank in terms of the size of the slash.
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