US employment data and Fed speeches are awaited - BBH

Analysts at BBH suggest that the US dollar is narrowly mixed as the employment data and Fed speeches are awaited.  

Key Quotes

“Six Fed officials speak today, including Yellen and Fischer.  Regional Presidents Williams, Rosengren, Evans, and Bullard also speak. It will be the first flurry of speeches since the FOMC meeting.” 

“The market's take away from the FOMC statement is that it was little changed.  The Fed characterized soft Q1 growth as being driven by transitory factors.  The odds of a June rate hike were marked up, even if not to the level of near-certainty that of Bloomberg's calculation.”

“The April employment report is expected to recover from the weather-induced slowdown in March.  However, the PMI and ISM were not particularly encouraging, though weekly jobless claims are supportive.  Of note, Linkedin reported earlier this week that its jobs report showed April was the strongest month for hiring since June 201.  However, it noted narrow breadth as three sectors — manufacturing; aerospace, automotive and transport; and software — were responsible while the other 10 industries showed slower job growth. Anything above 187k non-farm payroll growth, which was last year's average, must be considered reasonably good given the maturing of the expansion.”

“Earnings growth needs to rise 0.3% to keep the year-over-year rate at 2.7%, which while unimpressive historically, is near the cyclical high.  Ideally, the underemployment rate continues its downward course.  It fell to 8.9% in March from 9.2% in February.  Last April it stood at 9.7%, which bears out the Fed's point that there was still cyclical slack in the labor market and that it was not all structural.”