The United States released the infamous jobs report for the month of October, where the Nonfarm payrolls increased by 80,000 jobs, below median estimates of 95,000 added jobs and the prior revised estimate of 191 thousand jobs added back in September, while the unemployment rate dropped unexpectedly to 9.0% from 9.1% the prior and expected estimate.
The fact that job growth is still weak in the United States didn’t surprise markets, however, the drop in unemployment represented a pleasant surprise to traders, especially after the Federal Reserve Bank had raised their unemployment projections for this year and next year, where unemployment is expected to remain above 9% this year, and the Fed expects unemployment to drop “only gradually”.
Nonetheless, jitters from Europe continued to weigh down on confidence levels, where traders were still concerned amid mixed signals from the G20 summit, where reports signaled that few countries pledged to support Europe in its battle to solve the widening debt crisis in the euro zone region.
Accordingly, traders targeted lower yielding assets and avoided higher yielding ones, which provided the U.S. dollar with more bullish momentum against major currencies.
The U.S. dollar rebounded to the upside against a basket of major currencies on Friday, where the U.S. dollar index was trading at 77.27, compared with the opening level at 76.80. The Euro fell against the Dollar, where the EUR/USD pair traded at $1.3738, compared with the opening level at $1.3822, the British Pound also fell against the Dollar, where the GBP/USD pair traded around $1.5962, compared with the opening level at $1.6034, and the U.S. dollar gained against the Japanese Yen, where the USD/JPY pair was trading around 78.22, compared with the opening level at 78.06.
Stocks in the United States gained by opening on Friday, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average was lower by nearly 1.25% to trade around 11,893, while the S&P 500 index was down by nearly 1.40% to trade around 1244. European stock indexes were also lower before closing on Friday, where FTSE 100 was down by nearly 0.50% to trade at 5517 and the DAX was down by nearly 2.60% to close around 5974.
Gold prices fell on Friday to trade now around $1752 an ounce and crude oil prices also dropped to trade around $93 a barrel.
