Equity markets lower ahead of NFPs

Stock markets around the globe slipped on Friday, and investors took some profits from the recent massive rally, with E.U. and U.S. indices trading half a percent lower during the Frankfurt session.

The Nasdaq 100 index is about to end its eight days winning streak if the index closes down today. Nevertheless, it is still up 3% in August so far. 

The U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping bans on U.S. transactions with China’s ByteDance, owner of video-sharing app TikTok, and Tencent Holdings, operator of a messenger app WeChat. These bans go into effect in 45 days. It seems that the US-China relations are again deteriorating. 

From other news, German industrial production rose 8.9% month-on-month in June, up from 7.4% in the previous month. The yearly change improved from -19.5% to -11.7%. 

Later in the day, the US NFP report is expected to show that the U.S. economy created 1,600K new jobs in July, sharply down from 4.800K in June. The unemployment rate is forecast to improve to 10.5% from 11.1%. However, considering the huge ADP miss on Wednesday, we might see some disappointment here as well.

The U.S. dollar gained some momentum ahead of these numbers, and the EURUSD pair declined toward the 1.18 level.