Short Term
In context today’s new claims for unemployment number is bad news
These days you can't read an economic report, especially a jobs report, without a calendar. Today's report on initial claims for unemployment -- a weekly number for the week ended July 4--showed that new claims for unemployment continued their slow drop. The total of...
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
... a lot of data on commodities. You're excused if commodity prices haven't been on the top of mind lately. There have been a few other things to think about. So maybe you've missed some of the big moves in the sector. Copper, for example, has been up for seven...
What do you know? A rational stock market for a day!
Stocks refused to follow the headline job gains reported today--and instead focused upon the uncertainty in the economy looking forward as the re-opening economy gave off signs that the recovery might be about to stall--or even step backward. Even though the June jobs...
Pfizer good news on coronavirus vaccine moves stocks ahead
Just in case you were wondering if the market is counting on a coronavirus vaccine in the nearer term, wonder no longer. (Expectations, for the moment, look to a vaccine by January, if I can judge by comments I'm seeing.) News from Pfizer (PFE) and partner BioNtech...
The debt load for consumers and companies just keeps rising
We'll soon get new figures from the Federal Reserve now that the second quarter is coming to an end today, but I'd guess that the debt picture won't be better than it was at the end of the first quarter on March 31. At the end of May non-financial corporate debt in...
A promising trading strategy for upcoming earnings season
I'd like to see this pattern season for a few more days--until next week I'd say--but I think I see a promising trading strategy for the second quarter earnings season that begins, in my mind at least, with JPMorgan Chase (JPM) before the market open on Tuesday, July...
New claims for unemployment fall again but pace of recovery slows
Initial claims for unemployment fell by 60,000 for the week ended June 20 to 1.48 million, the Labor Department reported today. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected a bigger drop to 1.32 million claims. The week's new claims figure was down from a drop of...
Weekly new claims for unemployment drop again–but at slower than expected pace
If the contests between the stock market--which sees a rapid V-shaped recovery for the economy--and the Federal Reserve--which sees a slow recovery very stretching over two years, today's report on New Claims for Unemployment comes down on slow recovery side. Initial...
China shows growth but no signs yet of V-shaped recovery
New economic data from China over the weekend point to a recovery of growth for the economy in the second half of 2020 but not the kind of surge needed to produce a V-shaped recovery. Industrial output rose 4.4% from a year earlier in May with steel output rising to a...
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...
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...Jim’s Stock Alerts
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