Total Payrolls showed 227k increase in January that was much higher than the consensus of 190k. The NFP data was the largest in couple of months, reassuring strong US labor market. Additionally we saw unemployment edging up to 4.8 % and the only decrease was in the average hourly earnings annual rate. My expectations from today’s US data are that NFP will come better than expected (210k-215k vs 190k expected) while Unemployment Rate and Average Hourly Earnings will roughly stay the same. But you can never be 100 % sure of data so we need to wait and see.
Technically the rallies on EUR/USD are still sold into and depending on NFP we might see a fade on rallies close to 1.0675. Currently the pair is trapped within the rectangle range and we can clearly see 3 trend lines that have formed Xcross ™ at important levels. Today’s NFP levels to watch for are: 1.0675 (H5, ATR overshot), 1.0642 (ATR top ), 1.0600 (H3, Xcross ™), 1.0572 (ATR, DPP, Xcross ™) and 1.0525 (L4, Xcross ™).
