Non-Farm Payrolls, Earnings Season

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Friday, Jan. 9. Jobs Day!

State of Play

As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0500, things are mixed ahead of the start of earnings season and non-farm payrolls:

• Stock index futures are set to open a bit lower, with S&P 500 and Nasdaq down 0.3% each;

• Cryptos appear to be rebounding after several days of selling. Bitcoin is up 1.5% to trade close to $95,000;

• Commodities are also seeing signs of life, with WTI crude oil up 2% to trade north of $75/barrel and copper up 0.3%;

• Bonds are unchanged. The 10-year yields 4.70%

Today’s Known Events

Non-farm payrolls are the main event of the day. We’ve been forced to wait for this. Normally released on the first Friday of the month, it was postponed last week due to the New Year’s holiday.

Anyway, now that it’s finally here the numbers that are anticipated when it prints again 0830:

• Headline figure of 164,000 new jobs, a drop from the 227,000 recorded last month;

• Private payrolls of 135,000, down from 194,000;

• This would leave the unemployment rate unchanged at 4.2%;

• An increase of 0.3% to average hourly earnings (month-over-month), a tick below last month’s figure of 0.4%;

• Manufacturing payrolls increase by 5,000, below last month’s 22,000 (probably due to seasonal elements).

(‘Nervous trader stares at ‘non-farm payrolls’ graffiti art by author via Grok AI)