A.M. Update

After yesterday's seeming ECB "Priced In" policy actions in which the market didn't even really feel strong or safe when it was up, then faded in slow, painful agony with little signs of weakness everywhere, it appears that the USD/JPY was ramped overnight in an effort to spark some kind of Index Futures reaction.

The USD/JPY ramped up until about 8 p.m. all the way up to 105.6969,  just shy of a six year high (5 years and 11 months) and the only thing the start of the ramp, the ramp itself and the end of the ramp right around 8 p.m. had in common was that it UTTERLY FAILED in moving Index Futures up in any meaningful way. Whether a purposeful intended attempt to ramp Index futures or not, it has been a long time since a carry pair failed to move futures on a strong multi-year high move. Since,  it has ended and is back below 105 now erasing all gains.


US equity futures continued to drop all night and were at session lows just before this morning's 8:30 Non-Farm Payrolls. It's not clear whether the news that rebels have advanced on (and were repelled just 3 miles outside the city yesterday) and taken (according to rebels) the city of MARIUPOL in Ukraine.

If this were true, this would be opening a corridor to Crimea and another front of the conflict, more breaking coming.

The NFP , after printing +200k gains for 6 consecutive months missed big time this morning with a print of 142k down from a revised 212k, the worst print of 2014. Despite this, the unemployment rate dropped from 6.2 to 6.1%.

The initial market reaction was "More F_E_D, longer F_E_D accomodative policy" , but the only metric Yellen seems to care about is average hourly wages and average work-week which came in at 2.3% TYD gain and 34.5 hours, both a decent print that will not cause Yellen to change course on rate hikes.

The Labor Participation Rate dropped to the lowest since 1978 with 92.3 million Americans unemployed (that's how the unemployment rate continues to drop, they aren't counted as unemployed, they are counted as not part of the work force and thus not counted at all.

ES's initial knee jerk higher has been tempered with some choppy zig-zag trading as its likely the market is figuring out that  the low print is not the metric the F_E_D is worried about with unemployment rate at 6.1, it's wages and on that front, the NFP came in just fine.

More on The Ukraine situation in a moment.