Jobs day. BLS will release non-farm payrolls data for March at 8:30 a.m. Expectations are for a gain of more than 200,000, compared with a reading of 176,000 in February. Ed Bradford, a bond trader in Connecticut who goes by @fullcarry on Twitter, has put together 10 reasons why the number could be huge - among them recent bullish data from other employment surveys, and the end of extreme weather.
275,000? Indeed, some forecasters are predicting a reading of 275,000. "While our forecast of +275k appears aggressive at first glance, it actually reflects a return to trend job creation of approximately +175k (the six-month average is +177k) with a weather-related payback of roughly +100k," Deutsche Bank said. "This is consistent with prior episodes in which weather-impairment was followed by a temporary surge."
Wage growth. Last month we saw a jump in wage growth, and today's figures will tell us whether that was a fluke. "Specifically, it has been argued that some hourly wage workers still were paid even if the weather prevented them from working," explains Maury Harris, chief economist at UBS. "If that were the case and if the hours worked of such workers were reported as down, reported average hourly earnings statistics would be upward biased. However, we have at least tentatively rejected that hypothesis. When we compared average hourly earnings changes and average workweek changes across industries in February, we did not observe the negative correlation implied by the hypothesis."
PIMCO oversight. Large investors in PIMCO parent-company Allianz are calling on the German company to give more oversight to PIMCO as investors continue to withdraw billions from the mutual fund. "The leash is obviously too long because there is a performance issue now," said one top-10 investor. "A fully owned subsidiary should not be run like this."
Dallas Fed's Fisher on guidance. Dick Fisher told an audience in Hong Kong that the Fed must extricate itself from time-based guidance. "Fisher said he worried that predictable commitments were unsound policy as they could lead to false complacency and market instability," Reuters reported.
Booming Germany. German manufacturing orders climbed 0.6% in February, above the expected unchanged reading for the month, on strong domestic demand. "An excellent growth performance of the German economy in the first quarter is clearly in the making," said economist Carsten Brzeski of ING in a research note according to Markewtach, though the pace will likely "return to more normal growth rates" in coming months.
Erdogan rattles lira. The Turkish lira dropped 0.6% against the dollar after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Friday called for a rate cut. "The Turkish central bank in January had surprised markets, and defied government pressure, with a hefty emergency rate rise that helped arrest an alarming slide in the lira," Marketwatch.
Seamless NYSE debut. GrubHub, the parent company for food delivery megasite Seamless, will make its NYSE debut today on the ticker GRUB. The firm said Thursday it would sell at least 7.4 million shares at a price of $26 apiece, up from the prior targets of selling about 7 million shares for $23 to $25 apiece, according to the Wall Street Journal.
China IOUs. David Wessel summarizes a report this morning in the Journal that 16% of China's money supply comprises "transferable bank-guaraanteeed IOUs that firms are using lieu of scarce cash." "Uh oh," he Tweeted.
Markets. Stocks in Europe were higher led by London's FTSE at 0.41%, while in Asia they were mostly lower. U.S. futures were higher. Commodity futures were up.