Morning Briefing
Retail sales soar in May; Wall Street decides it’s a sign of a V-shaped recovery for the economy
May retail sales surged 17.7% from April. The pickup was a record month over month gain in data going back to 1992, the Commerce Department reported this morning. Stocks jumped on the news--as well as a trial balloon testing the waters on yet another attempt at a big...
Announcement of Fed corporate bond buying reverses market decline
The Federal Reserve will buy corporate bonds, a move already announced by the central bank back in March, but today the bank said it will buy the bonds directly rather than through the purchase of corporate bond ETFs. The direct purchases will be made by the Fed’s...
Dancing around the 200-day moving average
At 3:00 p.m. New York time, the Standard & Poor's 500 was up 0.33%to 3012.13. That, not so coincidently, is almost exactly the 200-day moving average for the index at 3012.39. Today, no big bounce after yesterday's 5.89% drop for the index. Bargain hunters didn't...
New claims for unemployment rise by 1.54 million for week ended June 6
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits continued to trend lower with 1.54 million workers applying in the week ended June 6. That's down from 1.9 million initial claims in the prior week. (Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had projected 1.55 million initial...
OECD projects global economy to shrink by 6% this year, worse than World Bank’s 5.2% forecast on Monday
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the developed world's economic think tank, today forecast that the global economy would shrink by 6% this year. (OECD members accounted for 62% of global GDP in 2017.) That conclusion is based on a scenario in...
An important message on risk from the options market–don’t trust the rally in crushed stocks
Prices on options market are saying that there's an awful lot of risk in some of the stocks that have soared the most in the rally of the last few weeks. Buyer beware! at this point. On Friday, when stocks soared on the May jobs report surprise, I went fishing in the...
In huge surprise unemployment rate drops to 13.3% as economy adds 2.5 million jobs in May–by the official numbers
The U.S. economy added 2.5 million jobs in May, the Labor Department reported today. The official rate of unemployment fell to 13.3% from 14.7%. In April the economy had shed 20.5 million jobs. Economists were surprised by the gains, to put it mildly. The consensus...
Another 1.88 million new claims for unemployment this week, slightly more than economists had projected but still down from the prior week
Initial claims for unemployment for regular state programs totaled 1.88 million for the week ended May 30, according to the Labor Department. (This total does not include self-employed or gig workers that are now receiving unemployment under newly passed coronavirus...
Anticipating more rally for the end of this week: slower growth in new claims for unemployment (Thursday) and in job cuts (Friday) likely to be seen as signs of a bottom for economy
Tomorrow it's Thursday and time for another weekly report on initial claims for unemployment. In absolute terms the numbers are likely to be grim. Economists project that tomorrow's report will show another 1.8 million workers have filed new claims for unemployment....
China orders state-owned companies to halt purchases of U.S. pork and soybeans, putting trade deal in further jeopardy
China has told state-owned companies to halt purchases of soybeans and pork from the United States in response to President Donald Trump's announcement that his administration would begin the process of eliminating Hong Kong's special trade status. Chinese importers...
Can stocks now count on a Trump Put?
I think we witnessed the birth of a Trump Put on the stock market in today's Rose Garden press event that investors and traders can pin beside their terminals along with the Powell Put from the Federal Reserve. Ahead of what had been billed as an announcement from...Jim’s Stock Alerts
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