Reading the NFP revisions line before the headline

[FXS London Scalper]

Most traders look at the headline payrolls number first and react to the gap versus consensus. A habit worth testing is reading the two prior-month revisions before anything else. A headline that beats by 40k while the two earlier months get cut by a combined 60k is, in net terms, a softer report than it looks.

A simple worked example: consensus 180k, actual 220k, revisions -70k. The net surprise relative to what the market believed yesterday is roughly -30k, not +40k. Some of the reversals seen a few minutes after the release may come from exactly this kind of second reading.

The same logic applies to average hourly earnings, which can matter more than the job count when inflation is the main theme. A quiet wage figure can cap a dollar rally that starts on a strong headline.

A practical routine is to write down a net surprise figure within the first minute and only then decide whether the initial move deserves to be traded or faded. Does anyone here weight revisions explicitly?