NFP and the BLS

I dread the first Friday of every month, because that is the day that the NFP (Non-Farm Payrolls) report is issued at 8:30AM EST, and that is the day that the forex market goes completely bonkers, at least for a little while.

I am not what is considered a "News" trader so I would much rather that the news come out, get quietly digested by the market participants, and then the currencies begin to move in a nice, orderly, reasonably-well-thought-out manner.

But no, what happens is, the news is released, the traders all freak out and start pushing their Buy and Sell buttons with great enthusiasm, and the currency prices take off in one direction or the other. A few moments later the traders seem to reconsider their positions, and the prices often reverse direction and move just as quickly in the opposite.

The NFP is the report which makes the currency markets go the most insane, but there are several other news reports and information releases which are capable of causing almost as much chaos as the NFP.

Sometimes I do try to catch a few pips during such a situation (hey, if you cant beat 'em, join 'em...) but mostly I sit on the sidelines and say things to myself, like, Wow, I cant believe it....


The thing that I find the most frustrating about the NFP specifically is, it's so damn inaccurate that it hardly ever represents the truth of the US labor market.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the organization which reports the NFP numbers every month, and EVERY MONTH THEY ARE WRONG. Let me repeat that - the numbers are ALWAYS WRONG. Sometimes the restatements for the prior month's numbers are incredibly huge, because the original statement was SIGNIFICANTLY wrong.

For example, October's number was originally stated at 92k, but Friday it got restated to 79k. That is a 16% overstatement!!!

One or two months, maybe, the BLS could make mistakes..... but how can this continue, month after month after month?

Is it faulty accounting? I dont know how the numbers are derived so I cant really comment on the methodology.

But it appears to me that there is a very big problem here. If this were a private corporation that published these sorts of incorrect figures month after month, I am sure there would be some repercussions.... someone would be fired........


So why can the BLS continue to publish vastly incorrect information every month, and then the next month say "oops, we messed up a little bit last month, here's what we *really* meant to say"...



and why does the forex market continue to pay a damn bit of attention?????