(CercleFinance.com) – The New York Stock Exchange should move up on Friday at the start of the session, investors seeming rather determined to play on the positive side of the employment figures published in the morning.
Half an hour before the opening, the ‘futures’ contracts on the major New York indices rose between 0.8% and 1%, announcing an opening in the green.
According to the Labor Department, the US economy created 223,000 non-farm payrolls in December, a number higher than market expectations, which were aiming for around 200,000 jobs.
This is the ninth consecutive employment report to come out above expectations.
At the same time, the unemployment rate fell a further 0.1 point to 3.5%, which confirms the solidity of the job market in the United States.
Faced with the tensions prevailing in the labor market, the Federal Reserve seems to have no other choice than to continue raising its key rates.
‘It’s a good thing for employees insofar as this situation supports the revaluation of wages, but it is also an element likely to maintain the high inflation that the Fed is trying to fight with blows of record rate hikes ‘, recalls Srijan Katyal, at ADSS.
Despite this context, investors also seem to want to focus their attention on the good news, first and foremost the announcement of a contained increase in wage increases.
The average hourly wage has in fact slowed down last month, rising by only 0.3%, where the market was still expecting it to rise by 0.4%.
Market participants also believe that the good economic surprises reinforce the scenario of a ‘soft landing’ for growth, the preferred hypothesis of the stock markets for this new year.
On the government bond market, the yield on 10-year Treasuries fell by more than four basis points to 3.68% after the publication of the employment report.
On the currency side, the dollar retreated 0.1% against the euro, allowing the single currency to rebound after hitting one-month lows.
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