It's Thursday ahead of a long weekend so expect some choppy trade.
The highlight on the US economic calendar today is the weekly initial jobless claims report and it's expected at 200K, up from 198K. However this week has been all about negative jobs surprises and Goldman Sachs says the days of technical distortions in the jobless claims report may be ending. If so, “we suspect that initial claims could jump to over 240k in tomorrow’s print.”
That kind of move would certainly add to the bid in fixed income that dropped 2-year yields to 3.71% today, another 4.8 bps lower.
On Friday, markets will be closed but the non-farm payrolls report will be released anyway and that will make for treacherous trading.
Statistics Canada moved the jobs report to today from its usual Friday slot and the consensus is for a +12K number after 21.8K last month. The unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 5.1% from 5.0%. As always, watch the full/part-time split.
