Friday preview: US jobs report, trade talks in focus
The spotlight at the end of the week will be firmly on the US jobs report for the month of March.
Analysts are calling for non-farm payrolls to rise by 175,000 after the prior month's dismal reading of 20,000 which in turn was payback for January's bumper gain of 311,000.
According to economists, the latest reading on the ISM's services sector employment gauge, released two days before, was consistent with a pace of hiring just north of 200,000 people per month.
And at 202,000, the latest weekly jobless claims figures were at their lowest level since March 1969 and thus also pointing to firm demand for labour.
Such tightness in the labour market was expected to keep the year-on-year rate of gains in average hourly earnings at 3.4%.
For his part, Pantheon Macroeconomics's Ian Shepherdson had penciled-in a jobs gains of 165,000, with average hourly earnings up by 0.3% month-on-month.
"Mean-reversion is a decent starting point, putting payrolls close to 200K, but the March survey week was much snowier than usual, as our first chart shows, so the reversal of February's weather hit might be less pronounced than we had previously expected," he told clients.
In the background meanwhile, all eyes will be on the headlines coming out of the US-China trade negotiations in Washington and the third day of talks between the Labour party and the UK government to try and reach an agreement on how to avoid a 'no-deal' Brexit.
No FTSE 350 companies were scheduled to publish results.
Friday April 05
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INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ANNOUNCEMENTS
Consumer Credit (US) (21:00)
Factory Orders (GER) (07:00)
Industrial Production (GER) (07:00)
Non-Farm Payrolls (US) (13:30)
Retail Sales (EU) (10:00)
Unemployment Rate (US) (13:30)
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Halifax House Price Index (08:30)
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