US Dollar Drops After June Jobs Miss, Yen Leads FX
June payrolls came in at 57K, nearly half of expectations, hammering the dollar while yen bulls took charge.
June non-farm payrolls printed a ugly 57K against the 110K consensus. That's not a rounding error — that's a miss that makes you question the whole soft-landing narrative. The dollar sold off hard on the headline, bonds caught a bid, and stocks popped. Then reality set in and most of those moves faded fast.
Here's the weird part: earlier this week, JOLTS hit a two-year high. So why is actual job creation collapsing? The culprit nobody expected — hospitality shed jobs right before the World Cup kicks off. That makes zero intuitive sense, and traders clearly didn't know what to do with it. Conflicting signals equal choppy price action, not a clean trend.
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Gold was the real standout, ripping $83 higher to $4,113. That tells you the market isn't fully buying the "everything's fine" read from Fed's Daly, who pointed to strong investment growth. The Fed stays neutral for now, and that's exactly what a weak payroll print delivers — paralysis, not a pivot.
USD/JPY briefly touched 160.65 after the number before bouncing back to 161.14. Japanese officials are back in stealth intervention mode and the yen is today's top performer across the board. With thin holiday markets Friday as the US marks 250 years, expect exaggerated moves on any fresh catalyst. Watch that dollar — it's still the day's biggest loser.
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