May Payrolls Preview: Another Slowdown

There is a sad monthly tradition on Wall Street, and that is to put every upcoming jobs report on a pedestal and treat it as "the most important" jobs report in months, if not ever.... at least until 5 seconds after the jobs report when HFT algos and 0DTE traders have already determined the market momentum (while most humans are still patiently waiting for the BLS website to update so they can read what the report says, or at least pretend to) for the next several days and the actual jobs data is promptly forgotten, having served its political purpose.

And this month is no difference: as a Bloomberg Markets Live blog post from Thursday night writes, "it’s rare that so much hangs on a nonfarm payrolls print. They always set the tone for trading, but in this case we’re less than two weeks away from a Federal Reserve decision with little certainty about what the central bank will do. That’s an unusual circumstance (March’s decision was highly uncertain, but the circumstances were very different)."

Actually, no... nothing depends on tomorrow's payrolls print which a) will most likely be some manipulated, goal seeked experiment in boosting Biden's approval rating (at least until its inevitable revision next year) and b) has already been seen by the Fed, whose speakers over the past 48 hours have made quite clear that there will be no hike in June but instead there will be a "strategic" skip to "assess" the fastest tightening campaign since Volcker, etc.