LIVE Non-Farm Payrolls - 10th January 2020

Okay guys, hello, good afternoon. Piers Curran here on the desk at Amplify. Just before we launch into the non-farm payrolls action, just to do a quick technical check, can you guys hear me? Type a yes into that live chat room please, just so I know that I'm coming through clear. Give me the nod and then we'll crack on with our preparations. We've got about 30 minutes, pretty much bang on 30 minutes until the data hits the wires. So we've got some time to go through things steadily. So let me just wait for the signal from you guys that you can hear. Okay, so I think we're good to go. So firstly, thank you for joining. And looking forward to this. The non-farm payrolls event, of course, is always one of those big items that you look for on the data calendar each month. We're a little bit late in terms of the month here. I mean, obviously, traditionally, the first Friday of the month is when payrolls gets announced. Here we are on the second Friday of this month, but obviously Christmas and New Year just getting in the way. So a bit delayed, but finally here today, we're going to get the final labour market report for the US economy for the year of 2019. So of course we're getting the December 2019 labour market report announced. So it's coming at 1:30, and as you guys will probably know, obviously usually an interesting event for traders. Normally we get some, some price action. Obviously that's what we're after as traders, trying to exploit these volatile price situations driven by macro news. So let's get straight into it and let's start to think ahead as to what we might expect and how we might go about trading it. And what will happen here, just to give you an idea, so I'll talk for 10-15 minutes or so just to preview the— and get ready and analyze the kind of numbers and the economics of it all. And then Sam's going to jump on and he's going to take you through the charts and have a look at some of the technical price points that we need to be monitoring and be aware of all before the data. And so the data hits at 1:30 PM, and then I'll be back on the desk and trying to give you my insight into what I think the numbers mean and how I think markets are going to respond, you know, in real time as the data hits the wires. Okay, so let me start then by, by, you know, taking you through how we might prepare for an event like this. And it's definitely about preparation. Okay. Okay, let me show you some stats. Firstly, here's our data calendar. One thing about this event, I mean, obviously, obviously everyone kind of calls it non-farm payrolls, and indeed that's the kind of headline number. But first thing to note is that we get a hell of a lot of information here all at the same time. This isn't the US non-farm payrolls report, it's the US labor market report, which gives us measurements from across the labor market. One of which is non-farm payrolls. And non-farm payrolls being, um, the number of jobs created in the month of December. And on my data calendar here, I'm just going to highlight everything that's being announced at 1:30. And you can see— I won't add them up exactly, but you're looking at about 15 different numbers here. You've got Canada coming in with their labor market report at the same time. Anybody looking to trade the Canadian dollar versus the US dollar here very challenging because you're getting information flow from both economies. But often if the numbers— I remember a few months back where the Canadian numbers were really good and the US numbers were really bad, and it created a huge move. And the biggest move was in the Canadian dollar versus US dollar. But do bear in mind that Canadian data. But look, all I'm going to be focusing on in this preview is the US stuff. So the most that you kind of got 3 big numbers here. Nonfarm payrolls, the unemployment rate, and average hourly earnings. Okay, then even though we get 10 or so readings from the US about their labor market, they're the 3 ones we're most interested in. So let's, um, and the headline is nonfarm payrolls. And by the way, the updated forecast is 164,000. So we're expecting 164,000 jobs to have been created. So let's look at what's been talked about in the media here this morning. So Bloomberg running an article because it's the end of the decade. Obviously, it's always that time to look back over the last 10 years. And, you know, when we're trading nonfarm payrolls, it creates a lot of short-term volatility that we're trying to exploit. But actually, it's quite interesting to sometimes just step back from that short-term and look at the longer term. And what's interesting, I'm just going to scroll down to this chart here, because this chart's looking actually at non-farm payrolls, not, not on a month-by-month basis, but on a year-by-year basis. So each year, how many jobs are being created if you add up all 12 months? And what's interesting here is if the number comes in line with expectation at 164,000, then this would basically mean that 2019 saw 2.1 million jobs created, which Sounds like a lot, but actually that would just continue what is now a 6-year downtrend. And in fact, what's interesting is that would be the lowest— that would be the worst year for job creation since 2011, plus 6 years of decline in a row. So when we're thinking about that economic cycle and when we're having conversations about, you know, is the US going to have a recession anytime soon, and obviously the Federal Reserve have been playing their part in trying to steer the economy away from recession. When you're looking at the longer-term trends, then, you know, things are deteriorating, albeit at a pretty slow rate. I mean, 2.1 million jobs is still pretty solid. You can see back in the crisis we had massive— 2009 was the worst year I've ever seen, and indeed many people alive have ever seen, and we saw 5.1 million jobs lost. So yes, in the longer term, payrolls look solid. You know, anything around 160 up to 200, anything in this region is solid. But actually, in the longer term, things are weakening very slightly. Let's have a look at the nonfarm payrolls chart itself, because we've had some volatility here in recent months. And indeed, the last reading we got, which was for November, was massive. 266,000 jobs were created in one month. The month before that in October was pretty weak, though. It was the weakest number since the summer. What we've had in the last 2 months is actually a little bit disruption in these figures due to General Motors having a strike, which created a lot of disruption on the manufacturing side of the labor market. What's good about December, it should be a clean reading in so much as all that kind of General Motors noise is out of the system now. So we're looking at 164,000. Okay. And as you can see, if you take out the noise of the last couple of months, it's around about roughly on average what we've been seeing since the summer of 2019. And it's actually pretty much— 164 is pretty much the average of the whole of 2019, actually. So if it comes in anywhere around 164, it's not really going to be a market mover. It doesn't really change anything. And it doesn't change anything because the labor market is really strong. And when I say that, I'll show you the unemployment rate chart to kind of just really point out what I mean. The unemployment rate's at 3.5%. It's expected to stay at 3.5%. And that is the lowest for 50 years. That's 5-0 years. If I go to a max timeframe, you can see on this chart, you got to go back, literally back to the late 1960s to find the last time that unemployment was this low. So the The main point is the labor market is very strong, and it's what we call very tight. Now, normally in economic cycles, when the unemployment rate's down at the bottom, and when it's this low, what tends to happen is the labor market tightens. And what that means is, for companies who want to hire, there aren't many people out there to hire, because they've already got jobs. So what happens is this plays into the hands of the employee, because they can start demanding higher salaries. So when you get a tight, tight labor market, tends to lead to higher salaries, which tends to lead to inflation, which tends to lead to the Federal Reserve hiking rates. What we've seen in this cycle is unusual ultra-low unemployment, but actually it hasn't really fed through to wage growth. And let me show you, um, the wage growth chart here. So this is looking at year-on-year wage growth, and the blue line is the one I'm most interested in. That's the change in all private workers' hourly pay year on year. And look what's happened to it. As soon as we hit 2019, it's flatlined. And if you like, dropped slightly. 2018 was a really important year for wage growth. We really stepped up through the 3% level. This is why the Fed were hiking rates in 2018. 2019, that growth rate has flattened. Look, we're still above 3% and we're at 3.1%. And an important number this afternoon is an update on that wage growth figure, and we're expecting it to stay at 3.1%. Okay. And that just continues the theme where we've got an economy that's growing. Okay. Growth momentum's dropped slightly. Job creation numbers are fine. The unemployment rate is ultra low. It's just it hasn't fed through to wage growth and inflation. So it's that perfect scenario for the Fed going into 2020 in that they don't need to— they certainly don't need to hike rates. And indeed, the Fed have said that they're on hold, having cut rates 3 times in 2019. They're telling us they're not going to change rates at all in this coming year. OK, now, what are the figures so far this week been telling us? What kind of insights have we been getting from other data points because the US released a lot of information, some of which is labor market related, before this non-farm payrolls event. So let's have a look at what's been going on this week. Uh, first up on the agenda is the initial jobless claims. This came in at 214,000, incredibly low, in fact in line with pretty much the lowest readings we've seen for decades. Um, but it's kind of this pattern from that spike in December. We've been stepping lower ever since. So from this point of view, this is a really positive number. The lower jobless claims is, the better. So this actually indicates this could be a positive indicator for the nonfarm payrolls reading. Let's look at ADP employment. So this is looking at the private sector only. This was released on Wednesday and the ADP figure was pretty strong. In that it came in just above 200,000, the best reading we've seen for like 9 months. Okay, but what I would say about this, I wouldn't look too much into this information, only because in November the ADP number was at 124,000, relatively low, and then yet 2 days later the non-farm payrolls figure was 266,000, absolutely massive. So last month the ADP was not a good indicator, not a good forward indicator for payrolls. So I'm thinking maybe the same in that, right, ADP stepped up, but that doesn't necessarily mean a positive thing for payrolls. What else has been going on this week? We've had this reading, which was particularly concerning. This is the ISM Manufacturing. This data was the worst we've seen for, for for since 2009, and the employment component of this data dropped. Uh, the opposite of manufacturing ISM is non-manufacturing. The actual headline reading was okay at 55, but actually the employment component of this also dropped. So actually, looking at the figures we've already had this week, a little bit of a mixed bag. Jobless claims was a positive, ADP was a positive, but your ISM readings both were negatives. So really it's difficult to read too much into the prior data that we've seen already. It's not really pointing one way or the other. Let's look back then and see what some of the big guns are thinking. Because as I mentioned to you, the headline forecast is 164,000. JP Morgan are the most bearish of the big guns on, on, on the street, and they're coming in at 125,000. That's their forecast for payrolls. They think the unemployment rate is going to stay unchanged at 3.5%. They're also bearish on the wage growth. So we'll just take you back quickly to the data calendar. The average hourly earnings forecast is to stay unchanged year on year at 3.1%. So JPMorgan are not only bearish on the payrolls figure, they're also bearish on the wage growth figure as well. They're citing, you know, facts. They're actually talking about Thanksgiving. And so this is something to note. Thanksgiving was very late in November this year. It came on the 28th of November. That just means it kind of can, can have a spillover negative effect on job creation in at the start of December, which can then have a knock-on negative impact on payrolls for December. JP Morgan, I look, I've been looking back through the years and looking at the last times we've had a really late Thanksgiving, and their analysis says each time we get a late Thanksgiving, it tends to feed through negatively to payrolls. That's what JP Morgan think. Um, most of the other guys are roughly around the, the forecast. Wells Fargo at 150, Capital Economics 150, NatWest at 185. Then you're getting the bullish end of the spectrum. Bloomberg themselves— this is a Bloomberg article I'm showing you— Bloomberg themselves at 205. And Morgan Stanley, um, are the bulls on the street, and they're looking at 210,000 And unemployment stand changed. Interestingly, though, they are looking for that annual wage growth marginally edged lower, but they're talking about a combination of strong jobs, steady unemployment, tame inflation growth— sorry, tame wage growth, which is kind of what I was talking about a minute ago— reinforcing the Fed's judgment that monetary policy is in a good place. Okay. Headwinds to our December forecast come from slightly higher jobless claims. In December. Well, it was slightly lower anyway, and along with declines in the unemployment components that— this, this completely contradicts their forecast. But anyway, they've got a bullish forecast, then they're pointing towards negative readings. Not sure what Morgan Stanley's desk is doing. Anyway, this is the, the big guns. All right, um, what I'm going to do now, um, I'm going to step off and I'm going to pass it over to Sam And Sam's going to look through the charts and some of the technicals, then I'll step back on before the figure, and we'll just, um, take you into the announcement at 1:30. Okay, so Sam's on.

Yeah, hello everyone, thank you, uh, for joining. Um, we'll have a quick look over the, the charts now. Uh, if you watch the briefing this morning, you'd, uh, you'd have seen our colleague Alex is talking about the dollar index, so on that longer time frame approaching a level where if we were to have a strong dollar reading, you could, uh, in theory, especially if we were to close the week above this level, see an extended move. So I'll start off with the, the dollar pairs and bringing in the EUR/USD here, which have been over the last, uh, well, let me put this firstly on a daily chart. Uh, we've talked about this, uh, throughout the Morning briefings, uh, this year, that trend line from what was the November low, that had given way. And since then you can see we've just been drifting down and down. So story of last year, trend line breaks and the dollar strengthens against the euro, seems to be starting that way as well. We are currently on a really big area of support, so if we were to have a strong reading or stronger than expected reading the euro to break lower through that would be pretty key. You can see here, if I just make this chart a bit smaller, those levels from the 20th, 23rd, 24th, and even before that on the 8th of December. So big level. Can we get a strong reading and break below there? If we were to have a weaker one, certainly with a few of the dollar pairs, you're starting to see these kind of trends from the last few days come into play above where we're trading. So, uh, it could get a bit of a relief rally. But certainly on the weekly chart, have a look at that Dixie to see where we finish. And also on the EUR/USD, a retest of that longer-term trend line would be key. A few of you I've seen talking about gold, and I've just got this on the 60-minute chart, and what a setup it is now. It's really waiting for something to happen. The trend line from the, the lows of yesterday, so well respected. Obviously in theory here we'd be looking for a break below there to the downside to target towards yesterday's lows. A really key level, uh, 1535 on the futures. You can see, uh, basically the low of the early hours of the 3rd when of course it all kicked off with, uh, the, uh, run in US, and also therefore is the high that we had on the 2nd. So important level, uh, for gold if we were to have a strong reading, a break of that trend, you'd be looking to see some sort of profit taking around $1540 area. But if it was to continue, $1535 could be that point. If you're bullish gold, and ideally here, then you wanted to see a weak reading across the board. But look at this trend line here as well, really you're seeing price getting squeezed in both ways. Something you would say has to give. Weak reading above there, and I would 15.57 and a half comes quite quickly. Another key level, key zone around the R1, the intraday R1, 15.63, also the high basically of yesterday, but more importantly the evening of Wednesday. 15.70 and above, there would be a very key level. And what a week that would be for, for gold, which of course having pushed up towards 16.10 is now back down 15. 1949. Equities, well, you can see they're just coming off a touch. 29,000 hit in the, uh, the Dow Jones futures today. What could a good number do? What could a bad number could do? Well, I guess it depends on just how good and bad— when is bad news good news and good news bad— will remain to be seen. Looking at some key levels, however, I would— worth— I would say it's worth having on this potential trend line over the last few days on the S&P and yesterday's highs before we had a big, uh, well, a decent push up into the back end of the session. So at the moment, that trend line would be looking to come in around on the futures 3275, 3276, and then yesterday's original high 3274, just a bit below that. A big area. If we were to close the, the day and the week below that, you might start to see see a little drift lower towards, uh, 3250 area again. But in, in reality, this market is just keeping on grinding higher and higher, starting to perhaps form a bit of a trend channel as well, you could say, with those lows over the last couple of days. So if we do get a positive reading, you can see just over from the, the high of the 8th to the high of yesterday to the early, uh, high of the, the Asian session, really nicely respected. So that would be coming in around about 3290, so be aware of that really, really, uh, important, uh, sort of trend channel, I would say, intraday. And of course you've got the 3300 level in the futures, which would be the first time it's, it's ever been hit. Dow Jones just coming off a touch, but really, uh, that's a bit of pre-positioning ahead of this release. 29,000, of course, a key resistance point. Have a quick look over at T-notes. Uh, as you can see here, just coming up to an important resistance area zone, if you like, that I would keep an eye on if we were to have a weaker reading. You can see also an important area that I'd have on the charts, which was the low that we had on the 6th, the 7th, early hours on the 8th, before we broke down into the back end of that, just before the R2. So some important resistance points that I keep an eye on there. If we were to have an ultimately pretty strong number below the pivot, you would be looking towards, I would say, yesterday's low on that. So technically, these markets actually quite well set up. I think the bigger moves in markets targets, uh, for longer-term effect, if at all, would come on a really strong dollar number, just because the significance of that longer-term trend line on the, the dollar index. And of course, we're now euro below that trend line we looked at on the daily chart. Uh, you might well get a further push down to target some of the levels not seen since the back end of last year. However, weak number, the gold bulls will be happy and equities will probably take it as good news as well. Let me know if you have any questions at all. I'll pass you over to Piers. I'll be in the chat. You've got about 9, 8, 9 minutes until the release.

Okay, thanks, Sam. Let's just switch it back to my other screenshot, and I want to just focus back in on the numbers and what's expected. Um, I know it's a little bit small perhaps on my screen here, but just to remind you, then nonfarm payrolls is 164,000 expected, unemployment rate is 3.5% expected, and then the average hourly earnings year on year is 3.1%, and then the month on month average hourly earnings is expected at 0.3. Just to give you an idea on that payrolls number, the range that we've got, bottom end of the range in terms of forecasts is 125,000, and then the top end of the range on the forecasting is 266,000. Look, let's, let's be honest, I know that payrolls is a big event and traders you know, look for it on the calendar every month, and you kind of hype it up, and you're, you're pumped, and you're ready, and you want to do something in terms of trade. But you've got to be a little bit careful here, because in the grand scheme of things, I don't see this information that's about to be announced as being particularly important. Um, what I'm saying is, to get markets to properly move and to have a sustained move you know, for this information to trigger sustained trends up or down, you're going to need some pretty extreme numbers. So what does extreme look like? So let me firstly do payrolls for that. I would say that, remember, we're expecting 164. I think, what does bad look like? What, what's bad enough for markets to sit up and go, wow, okay, this, this perhaps is an indication that economic conditions are genuinely worse than we thought. And bad definitely needs to be below 100. Anything above 100, it's not bad. So it needs to be double digit. Anything below 100— what would be really bad, notably bad, is anything that's lower than the 2019 lows. So we had a couple of really lowball numbers though. February was 56, and then in May we had 62. So anything below 50, I mean, that really would be— okay, sit up and take note. We haven't been below 50 since 2017, where we briefly went there, and briefly in 2016 as well, once. So anything below 100 is bad, anything below 50 is bad, is notably bad, and markets will focus on that number and that will be the dominant force on price. However, on the upside, What does good look like? I mean, 266 last month was huge. Anything up around that figure would definitely be impressive. So anything— I think you're going to need to go north of 250 for it to be, wow, that's really strong. Um, basically what I'm saying is, for markets to have a sustained trending move off this, it needs to be information that's far enough away from expectation that it might start getting us thinking the economic conditions aren't what we thought. And more than that, the Federal Reserve may well have to take action and either cut or hike rates in 2020. Okay, so you're going to need something down below 100 or below 50 is bad. Anything up around 250 and higher is definitely good. However, it's not just about payrolls, and the complication here in trading this comes when you get contradiction. Because don't forget, we've got all these other numbers as well. So I'm really looking at two, okay? I'm looking at the nonfarm payrolls figure, number one, and then I'm interested in wage growth. Forget everything else, okay? The US call them— call the wage growth figure average hourly earnings, okay? So on that front, what does, what does good and what does bad look like? Let me show you this chart on the year-on-year basis. I think something that's going to be really significant here could be if the average hourly earnings number is a lot worse than expected and it drops back below 3%, I think that would be quite notable. And I think that might lead us to start thinking, you know what, the Fed are going to have to cut rates in 2020. That would be obviously dollar weakening, of course. T-notes would, would move higher. We'll talk about market reaction in a second. But anything below 3%, an average hourly earnings year on year starting with a 2, I think would be the best scenario from a trader's point of view. Anything that's— the highest average hourly earnings have been is 3.4%. That was almost a year ago. Anything at 3.4% or dare I say higher, 3.5%, then everyone's going to wake up and go, wow, you know what? Finally, this tight labor market is leading to wage growth, which might then lead to inflation. And you know what? Forget the Fed cutting. We might even need to start thinking about the Fed hiking rates. So this average hourly earnings, anything below 3 is really bad. Anything up at 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 would be huge. Forget nonfarm payrolls in that scenario. It doesn't matter what that figure is. It would be the 3.5% wage growth figure that dominates how markets react. The real problem comes when you get a really good payrolls and a really bad average hourly earnings, then you just get a mess. And as a trader, you need discipline to just sit out of that. There's such a huge temptation to want to trade, you know, it's a big event, market's going to move, I want to profit from that. But you've got to be disciplined and say, you know what, I'm going to wait and analyze the numbers. And don't forget that this event, the algorithmic trading systems are all over this. It means you're going to get what looks like almost instantaneous market reaction. You can't compete for speed with computers. What I would do with this information is just sit back. Don't, don't be too trigger happy because you might get— you might see, wow, massive non-farm payrolls number. Okay, quick, sell EURUSD because I think the dollar is going to strengthen, so I'm going to go short EURUSD. But because you're slower than machines, you end up selling right at the bottom of the algo spike to the downside, you sell. The algos then buy back to book profit, and you get hurt in the pullback. Okay, so it's best to sit out of that algo-driven, almost instantaneous noise, digest the information, make a proper analysis and assessment of the numbers, then make your decision. Our market's going to trend here because you can get movement that lasts hours off the back of this if it's significant. Okay, I'm gonna go back to the charts and just set this up. We're, um, 2 minutes out, but we've got a slight lag here because of YouTube, so I am coming to you slightly delayed. There's like a 20-second delay, um, so I'm going to be— so I'm going to stop talking in 1 minute and we're going to listen in to the, uh, the figures, and then I'm going to give you my, uh, my response to that as soon as I possibly can. Okay. But just be careful. This is dangerous. It's often way easier to lose money trying to trade payrolls than it is to make money. I'd be disciplined. I would only really properly start trading this if we get dramatic information. So that's payrolls below 100 or payrolls above 250, or it's average hourly earnings below 3 or up at 3.4 kind of levels. Okay. Okay, we've got 1 minute on the clock. I'm coming to you slightly delayed, remember, so the figures are due at 1:30 PM. So let's see what we get. I'm going to have my squawk on so we can get the news through the— through to you, and then I'm going to give you my— try and give you my sort of quick analysis and interpretation of what I think the numbers are overall and how I think markets may well behave. If I think it's a non-event, then I'm not trading and so on. Okay, so we got 25 seconds on my watch. 10 seconds. Okay, 10 seconds. 145. 145. That's 145. Blood expected of 164. For the earnings, month on month, 0 spots, 1%. Blood expected, 0 spot, 3. The own year, 2 spot, 9. Blood expected, 3 spots, 1. Work week hours, 35. 4.3%. An employment rate that's in line at 3.5%. For the headline, that's revised to 2.56% and 2.66%. The participation rate at 63.2% matches the prior. I'm going to turn that off and immediately comment. This is bad news, and it's mostly the wage growth figures that are the standout here. Look at T-notes breaking up through the highs. Gold is testing the highs that we had from yesterday. Equities are quite flat, and I'll explain that in a second. And if we just quickly move over and have a look at the dollar, which should be weakening, of course, the euro-dollar's up through the roof here. Cable moving up above that 131 area. So that, that wage growth number year on year was 2.9%. So that's below the 3% reading. If I very quickly transition you back to that chart I was looking at, that's the worst reading we've had on wage growth since, well, 18 months actually. So that plays into this whole theme of loss of momentum in the US economy. Yes, the Fed justified in cutting rates last year, They're telling us they're not going to cut in 2020. But if you get numbers continuing to look like this, then expectations may well shift to the Fed actually taking further action and cutting this year. What I'd say about payrolls, yes, slightly worse. I forget about nonfarm payrolls here. It came in at 145,000, slightly lower than expected, but not enough of a difference to be significant. I'll refresh the payrolls chart. They also chopped 10,000 off the November reading. It was 266, they've lowered it to 256. Okay, but non-farm payrolls, yes, the worst reading we've seen for like 6, 7 months, but it's fine, it's fine. It's the wage growth figures here that are going to be the most important. Now check out, uh, let me just bring in some, uh, technicals here. I'm going to transition back to my chart screenshot. Gold then, just check this out because, um, someone's looking at that, that kind of trend line on the downside, but of course we've got figures here that are moving things north. And where we'd found resistance earlier this morning was at the, the low point that we'd had back on the 8th. And so we're up through that. And maybe the target to be kind of looking out for here should well be that high point that we had yesterday afternoon. Let me just get my rectangle out here. So I'm looking at this figure here. That's up at 1— sorry, 1557. So gold moving higher. In response to worse-than-expected data and maybe a little bit of an increase in the rate-cut expectations. Equities are really interesting here. I want to explain this because you might be thinking, what, why are equities going higher? And I'll zoom in on this because the S&P now is— I mean, it's been very noisy, so hard trading stocks off this data because on the one hand it's bad news economically, this is worse than expected, but it's not like it's disaster. And actually, therefore, what it means is, yeah, bad news, but we may well get another rate cut from the Fed. So that's like good news, okay? So that's why it's difficult trading stocks here, because you've got to be thinking about the monetary policy aspect and what the Fed might do as a result. So that's why the S&P stabbed and made a new low there, and that's now turned, and we're actually trading above where we were before the data. That all about, uh, rate cut expectations, you know, slightly shifting as a result of this wage growth data being so disappointing. Let's go and look at the euro-dollar cable, by the way. Well, let's look at cable first, actually, because we've just made a new high for the session. Um, we're kind of up through those lows that we had back on the 8th, so that's bullish, obviously, and, and probably targets on the upside. Well, and we're above that 131 handle, obviously. Targets are one up at 130,146, which nicely coincides with the high that we had from yesterday. So that's a really nice level up there. We'll see if we can drift higher. This data, I mean, you can see already that things have calmed. We've had a flurry of activity. But, you know, I mean, that wage growth data is bad and you may well, you know, I perhaps expect one 31.50. But I don't see that being tested in the next 5, 10 minutes. It might be that it takes the afternoon for us to kind of drift up there. Let's check in on EURUSD quickly, because that's had that nice, you know, powerful initial spike to the upside. And we've made new highs, but kind of at the moment a bit of a false break. EURUSD is just pulling back in here. I'm going to go to a slightly longer-term chart, um, because obviously this thing's been downward trending for the whole of 2020. Just to draw some lines, we've got such a great double bottom. If that— if we've seen the low of the day, which we surely have, a massive double bottom here, or even a triple, quadruple bottom. That 20th, 21st— or sorry, 20th, 23rd, 24th December lows. And today, such a good test. And if this weak data now sees the dollar weaken. Uh, the key target for me would be that key low that we had, uh, back on the 3rd of, um, December. That's up at 111.73. So that might be something to aim at if we do drift higher, uh, through the afternoon. Things are already calming down though. Let's look at T-notes, which pumped higher in the initial response. We hit R2, we're pulling back to R1. We've also got quite a nice level which was the morning's high coinciding with the kind of highs we had into the close last night. So that's down at 128, or pretty much on the 129 handle, let's just call it. But you've got R1 just above that. Um, okay, so interesting, definitely bearish. I'm, I'm interested in that, that drop in the wage growth figure below 3%, just from a sort of macroeconomist sort of analysis point of view. It's definitely notable and something that people are going to be monitoring very carefully. You know, we want to see how things pick up. Obviously, we have had disrupting— you know, you're going to get some analysts say, well, look, all right, bad wage growth figures, but look, they're seasonally impacted here. Um, so through the November and December period in the US where you've got Thanksgiving Thanksgiving, and then you've got Christmas, you often get disruption to the figures. So before you— we start getting too excited about Fed rate cut expectations, you know, people are going to want to see the January figures in a month's time, and they want— they're going to want to see wage growth stay below 3%, and then, right, okay, maybe the Fed might need to take action here. So what's happening in markets is things are pulling back a little bit now. Apart from gold, actually, gold's the only one that hasn't kind of had that pullback. And we're just testing that level that I mentioned. So that's the high yesterday, midday, 1557.60. Um, let me just get on to the labor market, uh, website and see if I can pull off any further insight here in terms of, um the figures sort of underneath, underneath the bonnet, so to speak. So just give me, uh, just give me a second. By the way, the unemployment rate, not that it was really important anyway, did come in unchanged, um, at a 50-year low of 3.5 million. Just give me a second here. Yeah, the labor market website, they've obviously got New Year hangover here, um, quite getting the information through as quickly as I wanted. But, um, so overall, well, that closes out the labor market measurements for the decade, although we may well get some adjustments to these December figures, of course, when we get the January figures released in a month's time. So just a couple of things to finish on then. As always, get your questions into the chat. We're happy to respond to as many as we can. We've got a good number of you tuned in here, so thank you to all of you for tuning in, and hopefully you find, you find this kind of insight, the way we look at things. Hopefully you find it useful and valuable, and hopefully it can give you some pointers for how to tackle these kind of data events going forwards. What I would say, if you are keen on our approach and how we do things, then you can find out more about this. I'll just transition my screenshot here because if you do want to learn more about how we tackle economic data releases on the macro side, if you want to learn about how we set out our technical analysis and how do we combine macro and technicals to kind of create our trading strategies, how do we do that, and then how do we handle our risk and manage our psychology and discipline, then we've kind of— we've taken all our experience and we've spent— well, it would be fair to say we spent 12 months producing content on our new online portal. So if you're keen to know more, get onto the website AmplifyTrading.com/traders, and if you have a look at the online section here, you can start right now, right here, right now, on your phone, on your computer, and you can come and see all the types of chapters. So we've got lots of stuff around economics, but, you know, very much from a practical a technical trader's point of view. We've got chapters here on equity markets. We're covering off asset classes like forex. You can see that it's Anthony and myself doing a lot of these videos and talking about commodities. Then I've done a whole raft of stuff on technical analysis, looking at everything from kind of charting patterns through to Bollinger Bands and Fibonacci and RSIs and all the rest of it. And then, you know, very topically, teaching how to trade the news. Obviously, you technical analysts listening to this, I think this week, the last couple of weeks, it's been very clear that knowing about what's going on in the news is absolutely essential if you want to have a chance of being successful. And so we've, we've kind of canned all of this into an actionable method. How do we trade news? Not only kind of set-piece economic data, But then how do you deal with these events like, like US and Iran? How can you monitor news channels properly? How can you actually start to figure out how asset prices are going to respond? How can we build strategies, safe strategies with managed risk to kind of take advantage? You've got Will DeLucy here then also coming in on the psychology side, doing a whole raft of stuff around that discipline, that psychology, looking at behavioral Finance of Markets. And then we've got creating strategies, we've got risk management, it's all in here. There's about 40 hours worth of content. You get a Level 4 diploma for this. The price points, I'm sure you'll all want to know, is, is a subscription-based model, so it's £250 per month. So get onto our website, check it out if you're interested. So quickly finishing off, I'll go back to the charts here. Let's just have another look around the houses. Gold then, that technical resistance coming in nicely, doing the job. So we've hit that level and now we've pulled back. Pullback support should definitely come in around that morning high, 1553.30. You've got the pivot just underneath there as well, but a nice clean move up for gold, testing that key resistance now pulling back. I mean, don't forget, I should point out, maybe I should have done this in the preview, so sorry, but I did mention in the preview that these numbers aren't that important given how strong the labor market is, and further and more importantly, given the elevated nature of the, uh, sort of geopolitical risk, clearly the dominant force on all of these markets is not what's going on in the US labor force. It's what's going on in Iran, what's going on in Iraq, what's Trump tweeting about it, and so on. OK, so that's why also I think market reaction to this has been relatively subdued despite the average hourly earnings figure being below 3%. Don't forget, there's bigger fish out there that we're monitoring. So we've had some— this is, this is a great, great reason why not to trade equities on payrolls day. And let me go to a 1-minute chart just to really zoom in on this, because this thing went down, then it went up, now it's gone down. And it's like, well, what's happening? And it's a big conflict. Economically bad news, but then hang on, the Fed might cut— good news. So you're getting buyers and sellers, and they basically neutralize each other. All you get is noise. Very hard to trade noise. I would suggest. Other markets are like T-notes, then nice punch hour, as I said, pulling back now to that key support, as I've mentioned. So keep your eye out for that price point if you're a T-notes trader, around the 129 handle should be good short-term support, having spiked up to R2, back to 129, looking for maybe picking up a long position to then see this market maybe drift back up to test the highs maybe after the, the US guys, US markets open. So keep an eye out for that key support on T-notes. Otherwise, well, I haven't mentioned oil and there's no real need to in that oil doesn't really— it doesn't get directly impacted by this information, I wouldn't say. I think oil's response to this is often governed by what happens with the dollar. Yes, we've had a little bit of dollar weakness, But actually, oil's sold off here. You could argue that the negative data from an economic point of view is negative from the demand side. But to be honest, if you're trading oil, I'd very quickly put this payrolls information out of your mindset. I don't think it's significant for oil given what's going on in Iraq, slash, what's going on with Iran and the US. Clearly, there's way bigger forces on this market than the US labor market report. Okay, all right guys, well thanks for tuning in. It's 1:45, we've been live for 45 minutes. Hopefully that's given you an interesting insight. We'll be back doing some live sessions throughout 2020, of course. Get onto our online program, we're doing live sessions through that program most weeks as well. We'll be back on certainly doing live sessions here on YouTube for, let's say, the Federal Reserve meeting and announcements, of course. And maybe that Fed meeting next up has just got a little bit more interesting because we've got wage growth below 3% for the first time in 18 months. And Jerome Powell, what are you going to do about that? Okay, guys, enjoy the rest of the day. Good luck and enjoy the weekend. Thanks very much.