I Had A Bad Kiwi For Breakfast – A #Sad Employment Miss

File this one away in the “notable things you probably don’t care about” folder.

The kiwi plunged overnight on the heels of a jobs report that missed… well … it missed everything. I don’t want to spend a whole lot of time on this, but do note the headline numbers:

  • 2q employment fell 0.2% q/q; est. 0.7% gain
  • 2q employment rose 3.1% y/y; est. 4.1% gain

Obviously, that’s a ‘bigly’ disappointment. #Sad.

And here was the result:

NZDUSD

Most folks seem to think that’s an overreaction. Here’s Goldman:

New Zealand’s unemployment rate fell to an 8½-year low of 4.8% in 2Q2017 and the underutilization rate also declined to its lowest level since 2008 — despite weaker-than- expected jobs growth.

We caution against over-emphasizing this quarter’s weakness in the latter, and particularly given that jobs growth had surprised to the upside over the five prior quarters, domestic demand is running at a decade high, and that lead indicators on the labour market are robust.

NZ

Whatever.

All I know is that it pushed up implied vol. on NZDUSD across the curve.

KiwiVol

This of course leads one to think that the RBNZ has more room to push a rate hike even further into the future. Any excuse right?

So no need to worry about August 10 on that score.

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