A Slow Day in the Markets after Friday’s Payrolls Report

While missing estimates for the month, the US economy was shown to have added 215k new jobs in July. The previous two jobs reports were also revised higher, averaging over 200k for monthly job gains, a trend that has been intact for most of this year and one that is seen as the impetus behind the Fed’s decision to hike rates in September, despite a sluggish inflation report. Traders now expect to see the Federal Reserve hike rates in September, though there is one more jobs report ahead of the decision. The S&P500 was down 1.25% on Friday's as the index briefly tested the lows below 2067.4 before settling to close at 2073.25.

The USDCAD closed Friday on a softly higher note, on some encouraging data from Canada. While the Canadian jobs report matched expectations, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.8%. Building permits for the month grew at a strong pace of 14.8%, up from -13.9% declines seen a month ago and beat estimates. The Canadian Ivey PMI also posted a reading of 52.9, beating predictions, but was seen to be weaker from the previous month's PMI reading of 55.9. The Canadian Dollar was down overall and tracked the Crude Oil prices which came under renewed bearish pressure since last week, as the supply glut concerns continue to remain elevated alongside the expectations of Iran’s Crude oil exports also hitting the markets.