Quite a lot riding on a 'soft' US non-farm payrolls report, BofA says

Unless the US non-farm payrolls report for February came in "soft", then the "bad crashy vibes" of March were set to worsen, strategists at Bank of America.

According to Michael Hartnett and his team, the big picture was that whereas one year ago the Fed funds were at 0%, central banks around the world had hiked rates 290 times and on 425 occasions over the preceding two years.

That, they believed, was not setting the stage for a 'Goldilocks' economy.

Rather, it was the prelude to a so-called hard landing and credit events.

Market dependence on the US central bank and the Federal Reserve's own dependence on data meant that the S&P 500 had been trading "neurotically" between 3,800-4,200 points.

That, they said, would stop once the economic data turned clearly recessionary, for example, in the form a 200,000 person monthly decline in payrolls, and the interest rate curve steepened.

Should oil, high-yield debt, the SOX semiconductor index, lenders and emerging markets catch a bid, then the S&P 500 was headed towards 5,000 points they mused.

If not, then it would head towards 3,000 points.