My monthly looks at the Non-farm pickers and price reactions

GBPUSD is pretty slow to get its groove when the NFP details hit the screens.

Over the last four releases the pound has taken up to an hour to really wake up.

GBPUSD NFP reaction after 5 minutes

30mins

60mins

Although there's a few factors that need to be taken into consideration, context of the report to things like Fed decisions, size of variations to expectations etc, it potentially shows that the price may give a small window for a trade, if you're quick.

For what's expected today, the pickers have placed their pins. Here's the current top 5 NFP pickers and their choices today, according to Bloomberg;

  1. Ryan Sweet - Moody's - 200k (good to see him keeping the good name up ;-) )
  2. Red Wiesman - Morgan Stanley - 205k
  3. Stephen Stanley - Amherst - 210k
  4. Stephan Buu - CTI Cap - 204k
  5. Wesbury/Stein - First Trust - 241k

Both Bloomberg and Reuters have 205k as the median expectation and Adam has all the numbers covered in his "Payrolls by the numbers" post.

The main shock that can come from the NFP is a bad number. With only a handful of poor numbers seen over the last 5 years, mostly at the end/beginning of the year (due to seasonals/weather), the market knows that staying around a 150-250 mark keeps the ship steady. Outside of that we'll get bigger moves in markets. With Yellen wiping out other Fed members hawkish remarks to remain dovish, a bad number today will go some way to making her right and the buck will suffer.

On the flip side, a good number will need to be backed by a strong performance in wages and the unemployment rate if the dollar wants to battle back.

As always, stay safe and if you haven't already, our NFP compo is still open for business.

Best of luck.