U-turn…Late on a Friday

The US Fed has seemingly made a U-turn in its monetary policy stance since it noted global concerns in its decision to keep interest rates unchanged at its September meeting. On Wednesday, Fed Chair Janet Yellen made a statement that a December interest rate hike could be appropriate. This resulted in the market assigning a higher probability to a December rate hike and short term Treasury yields climbed to fresh 4 year highs. Today’s US payroll figures will be key to indicate whether the recent job market weakness was transitionary, but it will ultimately be next month’s payroll release that will be of utmost importance to the Fed in signalling whether rates should be lifted or not.

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