Friday preview: US May non-farm payrolls squarely in focus

The focus at the end of the week will be squarely on the US non-farm payrolls report for the month of May.

As of last Friday, economists had been anticipating an increase of roughly 190,000 in the number of new jobs, with the rate of growth in average hourly earnings seen steady at 3.2% year-on-year and the rate of unemployment seen ticking up by a tenth of a percentage point to 3.6%.

But following the very weak reading on consultancy ADP's private sector payrolls report on Wednesday, some economists had bumped down their call for Friday's payrolls number to just 100,000.

Arguably, what mattered most was the recent trend in job creation, so market participants were likely to focus on the average gain in payrolls over the past three months.

Nevertheless, the simple fact of the matter remained that over the past few weeks, many economists had cut their US and global growth forecasts on the back of the US-China trade war and it remained quite likely that at some point that would be reflected in the data.

On home turf, a trio of surveys were set for release on Friday, including that from mortgage lender Halifax for UK house prices and the REC's Permanent Staff Placements and Permanent Staff Salaries indices.

Further afield, China's central bank is due to publish figures on the country's foreign exchang reserves during the month of May.

Friday June 07

INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Gresham House Energy Storage Fund

QUARTERLY PAYMENT DATE

Civitas Social Housing

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS

Balance of Trade (GER) (07:00)

Consumer Credit (US) (20:00)

Current Account (GER) (07:00)

Factory Orders (GER) (07:00)

Industrial Production (GER) (07:00)

Non-Farm Payrolls (US) (13:30)

Unemployment Rate (US) (13:30)

Wholesales Inventories (US) (17:00)

SPECIAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Bodycote

AGMS

Camellia, Camellia, Circassia Pharmaceuticals, Glenveagh Properties, Golden Rock Global, Telefonica SA (CDI)

FINAL DIVIDEND PAYMENT DATE

Barr (A.G.), Bodycote, Derwent London, Eddie Stobart Logistics , Ibstock , Integrated Diagnostics Holdings, Irish Continental Group Units, Non-Standard Finance, Ocean Wilsons Holdings Ltd., Porvair, Reach, RTC Group, Seneca Growth Capital Vct, SThree