By Kevin Buckland
A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Kevin Buckland
The story of 2024 thus far has been an aggressive repricing of dovish Federal Reserve bets. The effect on markets has been a slide in global equities and a bounce in the dollar, setting up the former for its first losing week in 10 and the latter for its best week since mid-July.
The monthly U.S. payrolls report due later in the day had already loomed large, but its significance has been ratcheted up after data overnight provided even more evidence of labour market resilience, easing pressure on the Fed to rush to cut rates.
Traders now see a little better than 2-in-3 odds that the Fed cuts rates by March, down from a 71% probability a week earlier, according to the CME Group's (NASDAQ:CME) Fedwatch tool.
Where the dollar has been particularly strong is against the yen, both because of the climb back to 4% for long-term Treasury yields and with the deadly New Year's Day quake on the Japan Sea coast forcing the last wagers for a hawkish Bank of Japan policy shift this month off the table.
Analysts don't see the disaster as having a huge economic impact, but at the very least, policy makers who had already been sounding dovish will want to see how recovery efforts progress before tightening financial conditions.
Britain gets house price data, a day after strong consumer lending figures bolstered bets the economy can skirt a recession, lifting sterling further off the three-week trough from Tuesday that had been caused by tepid inflation figures.
The euro zone releases inflation data of its own later on Friday.
Key developments that could influence markets on Friday:
-US non-farm payrolls (Dec)
-UK Halifax house prices (Dec), PMI (Dec)
-Euro zone HICP (Dec)
-Italy CPI (Dec)