Jobs stunner
Whoops, a huge beat on consensus for US nonfarm payrolls!
Economists had expected +250,000 based on the reported consensus, but in July the result was a rip-snorting +528,000 plus further upwards revisions.
Employment has recovered to its pre-pandemic levels, in the greatest comeback since Man United beat Bayern Munich in the dying minutes of the 1999 final.
The unemployment rate also fell to the lowest level since the onset of the virus at 3½ per cent.
Average hourly earnings growth, meanwhile, ticked up to 5.2 per cent over the year.
Really, this was a stunning result, and way better than expected.
You can read the detailed analysis from from the king James Foster here.
Rug pull
To be blunt this is bad news for stock markets, as the Fed will not be pivoting any time soon, and indeed may well now hike interest rates by 0.75 per cent next time around.
On the plus side, for the first time in quite a while I've found a European stock I'm keen on buying, though it's probably illegal to blog about it now (I'll have to find a way to discuss indirectly, perhaps).
