Adam Horak's Blog – February 2009 Archive (2)

The pressures for a further Bank of Japan response to the severe downturn will tend to weaken the yen, although substantial selling pressure looks unlikely given risk aversion



The dollar found support below the 92 area against the yen on Tuesday despite general weakness in global equity markets. There will be a further suspicion of covert official intervention through Japanese funds to undermine the yen, especially as it failed to gain any significant support from the initial decline… Continue

The Jan US employment report is released at 13:30 GMT. Similar to consensus (-540k) and previous (524k), expect -525k, with the jobless rate jumping to 7.5% from 7.2% (its monthly average rise has been 0.3pp the past three months). We expect a number in-line with consensus to be overlooked by the dollar. However, if we take heed to the seasonal factor we could see the number come in better than expected as fewer workers were hired in the run up to the end of year, hence less workers to lay off… Continue