Volatility in markets continued with the opening of the new week in Asia following the data released by the US Labor Department on Friday. Especially in the commodity group, volatility has been growing strongly.

In labor statistics published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), non-farm payrolls increased by 943 thousand, above market expectations of 870 thousand, while the unemployment rate was 5.4 percent and average hourly earnings on a monthly basis increased by 0.4 percent.

During this period, the number of permanent unemployed people, which fell by 782 thousand to 8.7 million, is 3.4 million less than the figure of pre-crisis period, although it is at the lowest levels of the pandemic period. In addition, the labor force participation rate was reported as 61.7 percent in July, while the average weekly working hour was 34.8.



** In the 1st composite chart, nonfarm payrolls data is divided into a thousand and shown on the left axis, and the percentage change in the unemployment rate is shown on the right axis.

The nonfarm payrolls, which measures the change in the number of people working in the last month apart from the agricultural industry, which is shown as a result of the growth rate (GDP) and which determines the significant part of the employment increase, exceeded the market expectations in July, renewing confidence in the US economy.



**In the 2nd composite chart, the dollar index (USIndex) was on the left axis and the gold (XAUUSD) was on the right axis based only on closing prices.

Then, with the purchases to the dollar, it tested 92.88, the highest level since July 7th. And against the dollar index, which finished the week around 92.73 with a gain of close to 1 percent, gold retreated to 1758 due to the decreasing demand for safe haven assets in the markets, and ended the week with a loss of more than 3 percent.

While the dollar index started the new week with a flat performance around 92.75, gold in the Asian session fell to 1687, the lowest level since March 2021, with the positive effect of nonfarm  payrolls on investor stress.

On the first trading day, there will be a calm data flow in the macroeconomic calendar of the markets, and we believe that the horizontal course in the dollar index will be maintained, but there will be resolutions in the rest of the week due to the responses of the currencies of developed countries. On the other hand, we predict that recovery will be difficult to be permanent due to the volatility that has reached its highest level with 3624 points since June.