It’s like attending a bingo session. All eyes will be down waiting for the highly anticipated employment print this morning. Will this week’s ADP report translate into a much weaker jobs number? Will the stubbornly elevated weekly claims push the unemployment rate up two ticks? Will analyst’s consensus of a headline loss of -100k jobs and no growth in the private sector provide us with a non-event as we head into the ‘labor’ weekend? Expect liquidity to be thin as many New Yorkers skip out of town averting the storm ahead of the holiday. It’s another crap-shoot.

Better industrial data out of China and the surprising ISM print in the US has every, already confused trader, becoming ‘more lost’ in whatever convictions they have left. At least we have the NFP crap-shoot still to come, that is bound to surprise. We may give up all we have gained in a heart beat this week and we would be none the wiser! Interpreting trading strategies is like a new form of ‘ping-pong’, back and forth with risk appetite. This morning the EUR remains king and has managed to extend its gains in the wake of a well received French and Spanish auctions.

We are now back in the trading range.  (Big Picture)

August asset class performance.  (Bespoke)

U.S. dollar down against sterling and euro

The U.S. dollar is down against the sterling and the euro in forex trading today. High beta currencies are moving higher as the global economic outlook gets a little boost from the positive manufacturing data out of China.

This morning the Bank of International Settlements released its Triennial FX survey which is basically the market’s benchmark for forex volume and turnover. To no one’s surprise, volume has surged over the past 3 years. Between April 2007 and April 2010, global foreign exchange market increased by 20 percent from $3.3 trillion to $4.0 trillion, which is now the golden number for forex volume.