Summary:

• Bitcoin dips below $8k mark

• UK Construction PMI nears contraction area

• NFP report to take the spotlight in the afternoon

European benchmarks underperform severely on Friday as most of the major benchmarks post declines exceeding 1%. USD is the strongest currency in the G10 basket ahead of the NFP report. Gold and oil prices fall down.

UK construction neared dangerously a contraction area in the first month of 2018 as the PMI gauge slipped from 52.2 to 50.2 while the consensus had indicated just a tiny decline to 52. The British pound accelerated its decrease following the reading, however, the pound had not performed well already prior to the release.

After a relatively calm second half of January Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have finally taken a hit. This week is going to be one of the worst for Bitcoin over the course of the past months as it’s already slipped from above $11,500 to below $8,300 at the time of writing.

The European shares are poised for the biggest weekly drop since August as the Euro Stoxx 50 (EU50) is setting for the loss of over 2.5% this week. Looking at the individual sector benchmarks one can see that almost all sectors are posting declines with energy shares being the only ones in green.

The Japanese yen is falling more than 0.3% on the back of BoJ’s increased purchases of JGBs. The country’s central bank decided to buy more domestic bonds with maturity between 5 to 10 year. What’s more, it offered to buy unlimited amounts of 10Y bonds at the fixed rate 0.11% in order to take the yield back to the target.

The most important data scheduled for release today is the report concerning US labour market. The wide array of data concerning unemployment change and wage growth may be a chance for the greenback to recover. Apart from that, figures concerning US oil rigs will be published later on.