Decent NFP report fails to move markets much

This week's eagerly anticipated fundamental event was the US jobs report for the month of December, which was released today. The report showed a few surprises, but failed to cause any major immediate reaction in the dollar, gold or indices. Although the headline number of jobs gained disappointed at 156,000, the upward revision to the prior month's total and the stronger-than-expected 0.4% month-over-month rise in average hourly earnings meant that it was a decent report overall. The dollar thus strengthened slightly, despite the headline NFP miss. It is worth noting that the headline miss was at least partially priced in after the ADP private sector payrolls report and the employment sub index of the ISM Services PMI both disappointed yesterday. Thus we wouldn't be surprised if the dollar were to make a more meaningful comeback later on in the afternoon.

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