[MARKET ANALYSIS] DXY gets some slight reprieve after weakening on the NFP miss
DXY: +0.1%
- Ekes mild gains amid upside in oil prices and in an attempt to nurse some of Friday's losses after suffering from the disappointing US Non-farm Payrolls report, which showed an unexpected decline of 23k jobs for July and downward revisions to the prior month. Conversely, the Unemployment Rate was encouraging with a surprise decline to 4.1% (exp. 4.3%, prev. 4.2%), but was accompanied by a lower Participation Rate, while the data resulted in an unwinding of Fed rate hike bets with CME FedWatch Tool now showing a greater likelihood for the Fed to keep rates unchanged at the September meeting.
EUR/USD: Flat
- Takes a breather after rallying in the aftermath of the US jobs data, with the single currency remaining at the 1.1500 handle owing to a lack of fresh catalysts from the bloc.
GBP/USD: Flat
- Trades sideways amid quiet pertinent newsflow and recent failure to sustain the 1.3500 status.
USD/JPY: +0.3%
- Clawed back nearly all of the NFP-triggered losses and returned to the 158.00 territory in a continuation of the gradual rebound from post-intervention lows, while the latest tier-2 data releases and hawkish BoJ Summary of Opinions did little to shift the dial.
Antipodeans: AUD/USD -0.1% / NZD/USD -0.2%
- Marginally pares some of last Friday's spoils but with the reversal limited amid the mostly positive risk appetite and ahead of the conclusion of the RBA's meeting tomorrow, where the central bank is widely expected to keep rates unchanged but maintain its hawkish language.
This is the standard post-payrolls digestion session: a soft headline jobs print has historically produced an initial dollar sell-off followed by partial retracement once the mixed internals, here the lower unemployment rate offset by weaker participation and downward revisions, get weighed. The mechanism worth isolating is the rates channel: the dollar's direction after ambiguous labour data has tended to track front-end repricing rather than the currency story itself, and here the unwind of September hike bets is doing the work. The split behaviour across pairs is instructive: USD/JPY recovering toward prior highs reflects the rate-differential trade reasserting itself once the shock fades, a pattern seen repeatedly where intervention-driven dips in that pair have been bought back absent a follow-through shift in policy. The antipodeans' limited give-back ahead of an expected hawkish-hold from the RBA fits the usual pre-meeting compression, where positioning stays light until the statement language lands. EUR and GBP flat on empty domestic calendars is typical of sessions where the dollar leg, not idiosyncratic flow, sets direction. The follow-ons that matter are how Fed speakers frame the payrolls revisions versus the unemployment rate, and whether the rates market holds the September repricing into the next inflation print.