AWARDS

The Fed needs to see one thing in Friday's big jobs report: 'further improvement'

On Friday morning, (8:30am Eastern Time), the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the employment report for October.

This report will be a good indication of how comfortable the Federal Reserve might be with actually raising rates at its December meeting.

Here’s what Wall Street is expecting:

Nonfarm payrolls: +182,000

Unemployment rate: 5%

Average hourly earnings month-on-month: 0.2%

Average hourly earnings year-on-year: 2.3%

Average weekly hours worked: 34.5

Change in manufacturing payrolls: -4,000

The Fed needs to be confident that, as it has said repeatedly, there is "further improvement" in the labor market and that the slowdown in jobs growth during the summer wasn't indicative of a new, negative trend for the US economy.

On Wednesday, Fed chair Janet Yellen reminded markets that a December rate hike was "a live possibility" as she testified before the House Financial Services Committee. This comment is part of why Friday's report, the first of two before the Fed's December meeting, is quite important.

In a sense, markets are back where they were just before Fed's September meeting when every data point appeared almost like a road block that had to be cleared. The difference is that during this run-up to the December meeting, the Fed has been more aggressive about prepping markets for a hike should the data line up.

Economists also expect the unemployment rate to drop to 5% for the first time since April 2008.

That's a level most economists consider to be “full employment”, one hurdle that the Fed is likely to want to clear before raising interest rates.

If all goes well, and the U.S economy will show signs of further improvement, we can expect the USD to rise against the EUR. This is a good chance for traders to make profits from the USD/EUR pair on Friday. 

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Europe predicts massive wave of refugees will keep on flowing to the continent.

The European Union is predicting that 3 million more migrants could arrive in the 28-nation bloc by the end of next year, with the refugee emergency already providing a serious test of EU capacities to provide shelter and welcome the new people.

More than 700,000 people have come to Europe seeking sanctuary or jobs so far this year, overwhelming reception centers and border authorities.

EU autumn economic forecasts released on Thursday show that based on current migrant entries and a "technical assumption" about future flows, arrival rates are unlikely to slow before 2017.

The EU's executive Commission said that "overall, an additional 3 million persons is assumed to arrive in the EU over the forecast period."

The Commission says the refugee crisis has resulted in additional government spending but that it could have a small, positive impact on European economies within a few years.

However the EU said the real impact on national budgets is difficult to predict, given a lack of complete and reliable data about exactly who is arriving in the bloc and whether they are staying.

Most people are arriving in Europe through Italy and Greece, while Hungary and Austria have been affected by heavy migrant flows. Germany and Sweden are also feeling the impact.

Those nations, among others, want the EU to apply its budget rules with flexibility, taking into account Europe's biggest refugee emergency in well over half a century.

The Commission said Thursday that Sweden, which has the highest share of refugees per capita, is likely to feel the economic impact most, perhaps 0.5 percent of its gross domestic product this year.

Other hard-hit migrant transit and destination countries are likely to see an impact of 0.2 percent of their GDPs in 2015. While acknowledging the potential short-term impact, the Commission did not clearly state whether it would be flexible on budget policy.

However a senior EU official said on Wednesday that some flexibility might be allowed "taking into account well-specified costs and for a limited period of time."

"This has been an asymmetrical shock for some member states," said the official, briefing reporters on condition that he not be named.

As long as any help is "one-off, short-term," members of the euro single currency bloc would agree to it, he said.

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Facebook stock hits all-time high, again.

Facebook Inc posted surprisingly strong profit and revenue growth as the world's largest social network grew even larger, with a rise in mobile users and advertising that lifted its stock to an all-time high.

The company reported audience numbers that suggest it is set to take on mainstream media as an advertising force, helping investors to overlook Facebook's huge spending on hiring and building data centers.

Facebook now has 8 billion video views per day from 500 million people, compared with 4 billion views in April.

And Facebook's website and Instagram photo-sharing app, which opened up its platform to all advertisers in the third quarter, account for more than 1 in 5 minutes spent on mobile devices in the United States, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said.

"In the medium to long run, we believe that we're not competing between Facebook and Instagram. We're competing with other forms of media," Sandberg told analysts on a conference call after the earnings report.

Facebook had 1.55 billion monthly active users as of Sept. 30, up 14 percent from a year earlier. Of these, 1.39 billion used the service on mobile devices.

"Growth is happening across the board and we're of course looking for a lot of growth in the future in emerging markets," Sandberg said in an interview. "We're also pretty focused on helping bring the next set of people who are not online, online."

Ad revenue grew 45.4 percent to $4.30 billion, with 78 percent of that coming from mobile versus 66 percent in the year-ago quarter. "Part of the upside came from Instagram. The Instagram monetization engine has been turned on really rapidly for the coming quarters and years," said Arvind Bhatia, an analyst with SterneAgee.

Facebook did not disclose Instagram's ad sales figures. But the app is expected to bring in $595 million in mobile ad revenues this year, while its ad revenue is projected to grow to $2.8 billion by 2017.

Facebook's huge $3.0 billion spending, up 68 percent from the third quarter last year, did not seem to worry investors or analysts. "I think the investors would like the company to continue to invest given that the opportunity is pretty large," said Shyam Patil of Susquehanna Financial Group.

The stock rose about 5 percent to an all-time high of $109.34 in extended trading, before paring gains to about 4 percent. It closed earlier at $103.94.

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Twitter Inc. is doing all it can to start changing its bad run in recent months.

The Company has replaced the star-shaped “Favorite” button with the heart-shaped “Like” button. The news was reported on Tuesday, and the change has been credited to the company's aim to make the platform more user-friendly for newcomers.

Twitter’s Product Manager, Akarshan Kumar wrote: “The heart is more expressive, enabling you to convey a range of emotions and easily connect with people. And in our tests, we found that people loved it.”

The change had been requested by majority investor Chris Sacca, in June. In a blog post titled “What Twitter Can Be,” Mr. Sacca outlined various issues that the company has faced recently. He also came up with his own solutions to those problems.

The investor recommended removing the Favorites button, and using a Like button instead. He stated the same thing that the company noted in its post today: “It is now clear from across the Internet and throughout the world of apps that the heart is universally understood and embraced.” Mr. Sacca also pointed out that the use of the heart button on Twitter’s video-streaming app Periscope had received positive feedback from users.

The micro-blogging social network has not given credit to the investor for initiating this change. By adopting this policy, the company is somewhat following arch-rival Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), which uses its own thumbs-up button for likes.

The company has rolled out the changes only a few weeks after announcing that co-founder Jack Dorsey would head the company as its permanent CEO. The new chief has committed to accelerate user growth by making more positive changes to the core product. As part of these changes, Twitter users should also expect to see an extension of the 140-character limits on tweets.

In contrast, Facebook still remains one step ahead of the change with its proactive approach. Earlier in August, the company said that it would be adding six new buttons to accompany the like button that include “Angry,” “Sad,” “Wow,” “Yay,” “Haha,” and “Love.” For now, these buttons are available only in Spain and Ireland, but users all over the world can expect to see them soon.

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