How US Unemployment Figures Influence The Markets

Financial spread betting involves backing your intelligence whether a financial instrument, say an index or a currency (forex), is in all likelihood to go up or decrease in value in the future.

With financial spread betting you deal on margin, which enables you to take advantage of leverage, which means that by paying a small deposit you are able to take a bigger position than you would if you were trading the physical instrument in the market.

As in day trading on the financial markets it really does pay to understand what kind of events will trigger movements in specific markets.

The first Friday of each month sees the US Bureau of Labor Statistics release the all important non-farm payroll figures and they indicate the grand total of paid employees in the US, excluding certain seasonal sectors such as farm workers..

Analysts were hoping that the July figures which came out on Friday 6 August would provide at least some good news, and point to the fact that the recovery process was back on track after a visible deceleration in recent weeks.

The US economy shed 131,000 jobs in July, with the private sector adding 71,000 jobs. The two figures were worse than analysts were forecasting and traders reacted negatively to the news. The Dow lost almost 1% in early trading but recovered slightly to end the day down 0.2%. So too the FTSE 100, which concluded the Friday 20 four points down.

However, sterling rose against a weakened dollar reaching a six-month high just short of $1.60.

If you want to learn more about financial spread betting then a good place to start is with IG index who, according to a recent report by research organisation Investment Trends, is the largest financial spread betting company in the UK. Learn more at www.igindex.co.uk