[ForexNews]

There have been mixed advance signals for today's non-farm payrolls data - there has been a distinct downward trend in jobless claims data, even accounting for seasonal distortions, and the employment balance in the ISM manufacturing survey rose sharply in July. But the ADP employment report and the ISM non-manufacturing employment balance, both released on Wednesday, were weaker than expected. Consensus estimates collected by Bloomberg after Wednesday show a median expectation for a decline of 327k, with most forecasts between -270k and -370k.

The USD response will be interesting. It seems likely to continue to respond in an opposite direction to local economic surprises: this is partly related to markets not expecting the Fed to hike any time soon, but anticipating foreign central banks to be more aggressive. But this week, there have been signs from the BoE, BoC and RBA that they may be more reluctant to tighten policy than the market generally expects. If this view persists, then the tendency of the USD to weaken on positive US data could diminish moving forward.