Wall Street opens Thursday’s early-release jobs day with a genuine surprise: June payrolls grew by just 57,000 against a 115,000 consensus, yet the Dow Jones has stormed to a record high as traders read the miss as exactly the kind of labor-market cooling the Fed needs to stay on hold, even as the dollar slides, gold tops $4,100, and crypto markets extend their rebound — all ahead of Friday’s Independence Day market closure.

June’s Employment Situation report landed well below expectations: total nonfarm payrolls rose by 57,000, roughly half the 115,000 economists had penciled in, while the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2% from 4.3%, confounding forecasts for it to hold steady. April and May were both revised sharply lower — April cut to +148,000 from +179,000, and May cut to +129,000 from +172,000 — removing a combined 74,000 jobs from the prior two months. Leisure and hospitality shed 61,000 positions, while professional and business services, social assistance, and health care continued to add jobs. Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% on the month and 3.5% over the year, broadly in line with expectations. The combination of a soft headline print, a falling jobless rate, and steady wage growth has been read by markets as evidence the Fed can keep policy unchanged rather than a signal of genuine labor-market distress, and the reaction across asset classes has been swift and broadly consistent with that “soft landing, not a slowdown” read.

In FX, the broadly softer US Dollar has pulled USD/CAD down toward 1.4165 from an earlier session high near 1.4220, even as the Canadian Dollar itself remains near one-year lows against a basket of G10 currencies after the Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 2.25% last week. USD/CHF has eased to around 0.8045 as the safe-haven Franc, still recovering from a one-year low near 0.8135 hit in late June, draws support from the reduced odds of near-term Fed tightening. In commodities, Gold has surged roughly 1.6% to around $4,094, briefly topping $4,100 intraday, as the weak payrolls print sharply cut the market-implied odds of a Fed hike by September from over 60% earlier in the week. WTI Crude Oil has extended its slide to around $67.60 a barrel, its third straight losing session, as negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff report constructive progress with Iran in Doha over shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, adding a bearish supply overlay on top of the demand-side reaction to the jobs data. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has rallied roughly 395 points, or about 0.7%, to a fresh record intraday high near 52,700, while Walmart (WMT) shares are stabilizing near $109.60 after Wednesday’s near-4% slide, which was driven by CEO comments on rising tariff-related costs, a nationwide recall of roughly 700,000 bags of potato chips, and broader concerns about a tariff-and-oil-price squeeze on lower-income consumers. The US 30-Year Treasury yield has eased to around 4.94% as the soft jobs data reduces the odds of further near-term Fed tightening, even as the long end remains anchored by persistent fiscal-deficit concerns. In crypto, Bitcoin has reclaimed the $60,000 handle, rebounding from Wednesday’s low near $57,950 — its lowest level in more than 21 months — on the back of the softer-dollar, lower-rate-odds backdrop, while Solana is outperforming the broader market, up roughly 5% on the session, extending its recent run of relative strength versus Bitcoin and Ethereum. With US markets closed Friday for Independence Day, today’s reaction is likely to carry through an extended weekend before traders get a chance to reassess on Monday.