Recaps · US payrolls (NFP) · 7 Oct 2022, 13:30 UK
Not hot, not cool enough
By autumn 2022, markets wanted signs that the US labour market was cooling enough for the Fed to slow its rate hikes. The September report showed some cooling, but not enough. Stocks and crypto fell together for the rest of the afternoon.
The report
Payrolls rose 263,000 in September, the smallest first print since the December 2021 figure, but still a solid number. The unemployment rate fell from 3.7% to 3.5%. Reuters wrote that the report cemented expectations that the Fed would keep raising rates aggressively.
A slide, not a drop
Bitcoin was $20,020 at 13:30 UK. Unlike many jobs reports, there was no single big candle. It fell steadily for half an hour, steadied, and was -2.00% at the hour. That ranks #7 of 117 jobs reports in our data, at 4.3 times a normal hour. It then drifted lower again and reached its low, about 3.3% down, at 17:25 UK, near the end of the window.
- 1 14:00 UK: down about 2.3%
- 2 17:25 UK: Bitcoin's low, about 3.3% down
Stocks followed the same path. The S&P 500 ETF was -0.7% after an hour and -1.5% at four hours. Reuters reported that the S&P 500 closed 2.8% lower and the Nasdaq 3.8% lower that day.
| Market | 15m | 1h | 4h | 24h | 1w | × normal hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitcoin | −1.23% | −2.00% | −3.24% | −2.54% | −1.88% | 4.3× |
| Ethereum | −1.65% | −1.98% | −2.62% | −2.19% | −2.17% | 3.4× |
| Litecoin | −1.27% | −1.51% | −2.00% | −0.32% | −2.88% | 2.1× |
| Solana | −2.11% | −1.01% | −0.97% | −0.92% | −6.02% | 1.8× |
| Chainlink | −1.83% | −0.92% | −1.70% | −1.31% | −6.94% | 1.3× |
| Cardano | −1.01% | −0.72% | −1.10% | −0.57% | −11.08% | 1.3× |
| XRP | −0.47% | +0.39% | +0.58% | +6.44% | +2.05% | 0.6× |
Change from the 13:30 UK release, sorted by the first hour.
Ether moved almost exactly with Bitcoin, -2.0% at the hour and -2.6% at four. Solana, Chainlink and Cardano fell less in the first hour, at around 1%. The spread between coins was small, which fits a move driven by the broad market rather than by any one project.
XRP held up
XRP was the one coin in the table above its release price after an hour, +0.4%, and it was +6.4% a day later. Cardano had a bad week, -11%, while Bitcoin was -1.9%.
The pound barely moved, -0.15% at the London 4pm fix. This was a US story: a labour market still too strong for a Fed that wanted it weaker, and markets that sold off slowly on that message instead of all at once.
Sources: release time and figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (public domain), first-print values via ALFRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Crypto: Bitstamp 5-minute candles; SPY/QQQ: IEX. No consensus forecasts are shown because they are proprietary; comparisons are with the previous release. “× normal hour” compares the first-hour move with the median move in matched quiet hours. How we measure it.