All eyes on non-farm payrolls

Non-farm payrolls

There are very few moves in the currency market ahead of September non-farm payrolls. Expectations are for 170,000 job creations. The unemployment rate is expected to fall to 3.7% from 3.8% the previous month. Average hourly earnings are seen at 0.3% month-over-month (MoM) and 4.3% on an annual basis.

What does the market want? Clearly, equity market investors would like to see the non-farm payrolls (NFP) on the weak side as they wait for the Fed to reverse its tightening cycle. Earlier this week, stock markets fainted after swooning after stronger-than-expected Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLT) job openings and reacted positively to weak Automatic Data Processing (ADP) data.

The Halifax house price index

House prices fell less than expected in September, according to Halifax. The Halifax house price index fell for a sixth straight month, by 0.4% month-over-month (MoM), less than the 0.8% fall the market had anticipated. Year over year, house prices fell by 4.7%. Earlier this week, Nationwide reported that its house price index fell by 5.3% in the year to September, with drops in price in every region of the country as rising interest rates squeeze the market.

JD Wetherspoon

JD Wetherspoon returned to profit in the first half. The pub chain announces a profit before tax of £42.6 million, compared to a £30.4 million loss a year ago. Revenue is up 10.6%. £1.92BIn.

GSK

British drugmaker GSK is selling a 2.9-percentage-point stake in the consumer healthcare company Haleon, which it sold off in the summer. The sale will bring GSK's current 10.3% down to 7.4% and net GSK £909 million at Haleon's current market price. GSK earlier this year sold 240 million shares in Haleon to raise about £804 million.

Levi Strauss

Look out for Levi Strauss shares at the open. The group cut its annual forecast for the second time this year, seeing its stock down 1.6%. While net income came in broadly in line at 28 cents, net revenue declined to $1.51 billion from $1.52 billion a year earlier, missing analysts' estimate of $1.54 billion. Levi went on to forecast revenue to be flat to up 1% in fiscal 2023, compared with a prior estimate of 1.5% to 2.5% growth.

In North America,Levi Strauss has a higher exposure to middle-income consumers. This category earns between $50,000 and $100,000 and is particularly affected by higher borrowing costs and high prices. Net revenue in Levi's Americas segment decreased 5%, even as its direct-to-customer ratio rose 12%. Unseasonably warm weather through the late summer also dented sales.

X (formally Twitter) stocks

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the US financial regulator, is taking Elon Musk to court. The move is over his refusal to testify in an investigation into his purchases of Twitter stock and his statements surrounding the $44 billion takeover of the social media platform.

Tesla

Tesla announced yesterday that it was cutting the prices of its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in the US. The Model 3 sedan is cheaper by $1,250 to $38,990, while prices of the Model Y long-range variant were cut by $2,000 to $48,490. Prices for the standard Model 3 have come down by about 17% since the beginning of the year, while the Model Y long-range variant has seen a drop of over 26%.

Exxon Mobil

Exxon Mobil is in advanced talks to acquire Pioneer Natural Resources, according to the Wall Street Journal. The deal could value the Permian shale basin producer at about $60 billion and would be the group's largest acquisition since Exxon's $81 billion deal for Mobil in 1998.

ExxonMobil would double its production in the Permian basin. Exxon produced a record 620,000 bod in the Permian basin in the second quarter. Pioneer's output in the basin averaged 711,000 bpd in the same period.