Currency Note US Dollar

Key US non-farm payroll figures due today

By Ricky Bean August 7th, 2015

It was a busy day for the US dollar on Thursday, strengthening against sterling.

UK data outweighed the day with a treble of market movement news including the Bank of England (BoE) interest rate decision, inflation report and BoE minutes. Released simultaneously, these causing swings within the currency, with only one member voting for an interest rate hike (instead of the two votes expected). As a result, sterling lost some momentum, and strengthened the US dollar against the UK currency.

We also saw the release of US employment figures, which overall showed both positive and negative numbers compared to expectations . All in all, this has been building up to today’s key non-farm payroll growth figures, which are forecast at 225,000, similar to last month. As this is a key driver in the US Federal Reserve guidance for raising interest rates (which is still forecast to happen in September), any deviations downwards from the forecast figure could cause trouble for the US dollar.