Approximately one year ago a funny thing happened after the release of the US Employment Situation â fx brokers stopped 'guaranteeing' Stops, subsequent economic releases were preceeded with brokers warning trades would not be accepted 15 prior to releases, and posts on various forums discussed it all. What had occurred ? the released July Employment figures were vastly overestimated â Consensus Range 190,000 to 325,000 Consensus 233,000 Actual 32,000 http://mam.econoday.com/reports/US/EN/New_York/employment_situation/year/2004/yearly/08/index.html That over-estimation â or was it underperformance lead to an immediate upward spike and continuing rally of the EURUSD â 60min 8am EST price bar: 1.2058 1.2264 1.2051 1.2256 with a super-sized Daily range of 250pips 08/06/2004 1.20570 1.22930 1.20430 1.22790 This year's July Employment Situation estimate is not so far away from last year's â Consensus Range 100,000 to 210,000 Consensus 175,000 econoday.com Given the time of year it's not surprising that people prefer not to work, it's warm enough to live outside, unemployment pay is good, and there'll be jobs after students return to school. It remains for a short while to be seen whether there'll be anything like a repeat of last year, or, an actual humungous crowd of July newbie employees spending this summer working rather than not. For those willing to pay the money and take a chance â bon chance. One small clue might yet appear: http://www.moneytec.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8080 Dr. Ben Bernanke is now Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors . check tomorrow: http://moneycentral.msn.com/Content/CNBCTV/TV_Info/GuestList.asp
I take it from the above that you're long interest rate futures. I've been short the ZB for a while and I'm taking most of my position off b/c I don't want the headline risk. Probably most sensible thing is to go into the numbers delta neutral. We'll soon find out