Market News

The dollar broke new multi-year records against all currencies on Friday, with the $-Index climbing to 109.90 (+0.68%) before balancing out at 109.70 (+0.5%).
The euro fell symmetrically by -0.6% to $1.0238, bottoming out at $1.0215.
The Yen held up well, losing just 0.1%, while the Yuan also 'held' at $7.33 (unchanged), but - after -0.5% weekly - is now at its lowest level since early September 2023, threatening to hit a major historic low.

Sterling's decline continues, with a -0.8% drop to $1.2231, as the country sinks deeper and deeper into a debt crisis (the yield on Gilts exceeds 4.90% and has flirted with 5% on several occasions in the last 48 hours).

The greenback, for its part, is being boosted by US long yields, which hit new highs (4.75% on the '10 yr', 4.95% on the '30 yr') in the minutes following the publication of a much stronger-than-expected 'NFP' (30,000 more jobs than the consensus forecast of +256,000, against a backdrop of unemployment unexpectedly falling to 4.1%).
Still according to the US Department of Labor, the unemployment rate eased by 0.1 points to 4.1%, where stability at 4.2% had been anticipated, while the labor force participation rate held steady at 62.5%, and average hourly earnings rose by 3.9% year-on-year.

In addition, non-farm payrolls for the previous two months were revised, from +36,000 to 43,000 for October and from 227,000 to 212,000 for November, i.e. a total revision balance of -8,000 for these two months (status quo in reality).

The Dollar then eased a little as household sentiment deteriorated more than expected in January, according to the University of Michigan's monthly survey.
Its confidence index fell to 73.2 after 74 last month, while economists and analysts were forecasting a more limited decline to 73.9.

While the consumer assessment of their current situation improved to 77.9 from 75.1 the previous month, the outlook component fell to 70.2, after 73.3 in December.

The UMich explains this deterioration by their concerns about price trends, with inflation expectations over a 12-month horizon at +3.3% versus +2.8% last month.
Wall Street's mid-session decline of -1.3% does not seem to be affecting the $.

Friday was also rich in statistics on this side of the Atlantic: in November 2024, French household spending on goods rebounded by 0.3% in volume over one month (after -0.3% in October, data revised from an initial estimate of -0.4%), according to Insee.
Also in November, production increased slightly over one month in the manufacturing industry (+0.2%, after -0.1% in October) as well as in industry as a whole (+0.2% after -0.3%), according to Insee.