February 3rd, 12:54 pm by Barbara Zigah
(eToro Blog) The U.S. government will later today release data for January’s non-farms payroll sector. The ADP report released on Wednesday showed that 170,000 new jobs were created against expectations of 185,000 and a marked decline from 325,000 in December. Given that, analysts are expecting that the Bureau of Labor’s official data will show an increase of 150,000 new jobs for the month, down from 200,000 in December. Economists have said that the U.S. labor market is showing signs of recovery but the fact that the ADP numbers didn’t meet expectations could be enough to cast doubt on today’s outcome.
OpenBook traders will be squaring up on either side of the EUR/USD pair in anticipation. We reviewed the open status of several eToro gurus and found that quite a few gurus, including Moksel1972, babczyk and pyruss have open positions on both sides of the trade. Guru Moksel1972 has both sides covered, with an open short and two open longs. His open short targets 1.2884 and his longs are in the 1.34 range; however, even a good NFP good result is unlikely to see these opens turn around. Another OpenBook guru who hedges his bets is trader pyruss, who has a multitude of open positions in the Euro-Dollar with wide-ranging targets. Regardless of the outcome, unless it is at the extreme end of positive or negative data, this trader is likely to see some of his opens close with a gain.
Guru pawelskrzypek joins the Euro bullish contingent and has several open buys, two of which are already showing gains, plus has placed a few other buy orders. In the event that the NFP data fails to meet expectations, the U.S. Dollar could weaken further in which case trader pawelskrzypek may see his other buy orders actualized and be able to post gains for all of them.
In the Euro bear camp sits guru juergen13, who has a short position that he opened in late January which is targeting 1.2864. Guru NMarijus also has four open shorts that clearly could benefit from some extremely positive NFP data. But the targets for both gurus are fairly far out, with the range from 1.2725 to 1.2890. With the EUR/USD currently higher at 1.3152 and more than 400 pips away, both traders will likely need to see a triple whammy at the very least to meet their respective target, i.e. data greatly exceeds analysts’ expectations, December numbers revised higher and a decline in the unemployment rate.
In the event the data is extremely negative, the news is likely to send gold prices higher on the uncertainty. Gold trader WallStreet88 will no doubt be hopeful of a positive outcome, given this trader’s nearly two dozen short positions. Trader bestpowerfull, who is almost exclusively a gold trader, has only a single short position open but this trader who has more than a 1500% return for the month, and typically holds a position open for only a few hours and could just be waiting for the right opportunity.
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