Growth worries about U.S. economy mount today ahead of critical Friday jobs report
In a different environment, the disappointing jobs numbers from the private ADP employment survey and the weak quarterly sales reports from Ford and General Motors would not have taken the Standard & Poor's 500 down 1.79% and the Dow Jones Industrials lower by...Retail sales stronger than expected–there’s hope yet of fending off a recession
Retail sales in July climbed 0.7% from June. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had predicted a 0.3% climb. Retail sales excluding autos were up 1.0% month over month. Economists had projected a 03% gain.. Nonstore retail sales (that is the Internet) were up 2.8%...The drop in job openings worries me more than an inverted yield curve
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 800.49 points today, or 3.05%; the Standard & Poor's 500 finished 2.93% lower; and the NASDAQ Composite lost 3.02%. One reason for the plunge was an intraday inversion in the Treasury yield curve with the yield on the...Trick or Trend: Despite the good news from consumers, the U.S. manufacturing sector slips into a “technical recession”
Our regular (or occasional or perhaps occasionally regular) Friday series (actually running on Friday this week) Trick or Trend looks at what might (or might not) be emerging investible trends. Exclusively on JAM. This post won't run anywhere else. Ever. The overall...Shockingly low February jobs report this morning–but what’s the trend.
The U.S. economy added only 20,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported this morning. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had expected 173,000 jobs for the month. In January the economy added 304,000 jobs. The huge swing left economists and Wall Street...The U.S. stock market starts to play the Fed game again
With the shutdown/debt ceiling crisis behind us, the stock market is free to worry about a slowdown in U.S. economic growth and to hope for a delay in the Federal Reserve’s taper until sometime in 2014. That’s pushing the U.S. market away from growth sensitive stocks and toward stocks with safe dividends that won’t be cut even if the economy stumbles.
Back to normal–and the market gets earnings news to worry about
Back to normal. The United States won’t default. The federal government is open again—including the Panda cam at the National Zoo. And once again earnings count. Which at least for the day isn’t good news for U.S. stocks—at least not for the Dow Jones Industrials. I think we’re seeing three themes that are likely to be major drivers of the U.S. market as we move through the meat of earnings season
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing with one of our special offers it will be lower) for a year for ongoing and continuing access to the...The big numbers this week? U.S. employment figures on Friday
Although Friday’s U.S. unemployment figures won’t have anything to do with the sequester and its $85 billion in cuts that went into effect on Friday, investors will be studying the numbers with that event in mind and looking for any signs that the economy was/is/will be slowing.
Saturday Night Quarterback says, For the week ahead expect…
To subscribe to JAM you need to fill in some details below including, ahem, some info on how you'll pay us. A subscription is $199 (although if you're subscribing with one of our special offers it will be lower) for a year for ongoing and continuing access to the...Drop in initial claims for unemployment not as good as it seems
This morning the Labor Department announced that new applications for unemployment fell by 37,000 to 335,000 in the week ended January 12. That’s the lowest number since initial claims in the week ended January 19, 2008. Unfortunately, as a spokesman for the Bureau of Labor Statistics explained when the data was released, the improvement is likely to be a result of problems in adjusting the data for seasonal effects.