Risk off as traders eye beaten down expectations for Non Farm Payrolls tomorrow - Joshua Raymond, City Index

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by: cityindex
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Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2011 Time: 3:46 AM
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Joshua Raymond is Market Strategist at financial spread betting provider City Index (http://www.cityindex.co.uk/). Each week he takes a look at the market movements shaping traders' actions in the near future. Here he looks at key activity for 2nd June 2011, including news around the FTSE 100 and concerns Friday's non-farm payrolls could underperform.

"Traders sold out of risky asset classes today, continuing a theme from yesterday's session after much weaker-than-expected US economic data raised concerns that Friday's non-farm payrolls could badly underperform.

From 3pm yesterday afternoon, the FTSE 100 Index has lost 100 points. Though in truth, the 100-point fall came within the final hour of yesterday's session and the start to today's one. Since the initial sharp fall, the FTSE 100 has moved a mere 15 points within a tight trading range, emphasising the lack of vigour any buy side activity has seen despite the fall in prices.

A potential silver lining to the jobs report however could be that now with expectations fairly low, a strong number could ignite a relief rally for stocks and finish European indices on a high for the week.

Sector wise it is the traditional riskier stock sectors that have borne the brunt of today's risk aversion; the miners and oil firms. Both sectors have fallen over 1% in trading and are the key drag on the UK Index. Fast behind them are UK banking stocks, with Lloyds Banking Group one of the heaviest fallers on the day.

Tobacco stocks, a typical defensive sector, however outperformed the FTSE's fall, with the sector remaining flat on the day whilst travel and leisure firms gained, benefitting from the fall in crude oil prices over the last 24 hours.

Non-farm payroll estimates revised lower

Estimations for tomorrow's non-farm payrolls have been revised down from 180k to 140k-150k after the sharply underperforming ADP employment change report on Wednesday. The ADP employment report was the worst reading since September last year. Should non-farm payrolls follow this trend there could be a real disappointment in the figures and this may serve to caution that US economic activity is slowing. Traders don't always pay too much attention to the ADP report, though with several US economic indicators disappointing of late, traders are seeing this report as a potential ‘shot across their bow' for tomorrow's labour data."

For more spread betting insights from Mr. Raymond and other trading experts, visit http://www.cityindex.co.uk/market-analysis/

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About the Author

About City Index:

Today more and more individual traders are discovering the benefits of derivatives, and many of them are discovering them through a City Index trading platform.

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