The Great Dollar Hype

Just as the US Dollar was gaining momentum, the Non-Farm Payroll report dragged the price back down. This week started off as a bit of a bright spot for US Dollar bulls, with a slew of reports and technical levels showing possible signs of a short-term reversal against many of the majors. That was up until 8:30 this morning with the release of a lower-than-expected print of only 88,000 new jobs against predictions of nearly 100,000. In addition to the disappointing front numbers, there were two revisions lower from the previous two months. In the last two years, the Labor Department has consistently revised previous figures higher, and with April’s soft print this could be the beginning of a downturn in the long outperforming labor trend. It is important to note that these projections cannot be confirmed without a few more disappointments to substantiate them. In price action, the EUR/USD gained over 55 points on the news, with the GBP/USD pair moving back above the 1.9900 level to close the week near the 1.9930 mark. A relatively bright spot was the USD/JPY, which lost only 30 points on the day, while the New Zealand Dollar took away only 20 points from the Dollar. Next week, we’ll see if the report confirmed the long-term trend, or if it might be possible to see a continued bullish US Dollar in the near future. XPRESSTRADE Analyst David Hilgeman