Thursday July 2, 2009

The BLS Employment Situation Reports show:  -467,000 jobs (almost the same as ADP), 9.5% unemployment, job losses in every sector except education and health care, and absolutely flat wages.

Initial Jobless Claims were 614,000. Factory Orders were 1.2%.

All in all this is crappy economic news and should mitigate the bearish daily cycle and reinforce the bullish weekly.

Local Fed President Janet Yellin offered this: "Unemployment will “remain painfully high for several more years”.

The fact is that we are in an economic down cycle, the banking system is still troubled although past the most critical time.  What is necessary from Washington (excepting the Fed) is a realization that there is little to do in terms of fiscal policy.

Wednesday July 1, 2009

ADP jobs for June was -473,000.  This was worse than consensus but better than previous.  The BLS report is out Thursday. The SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard for June 2009 shows the continuing pattern of small businesses hiring and salaries falling.

The techs are in a bearish daily cycle which will keep yields higher through text week.  A BLS report showing much greater than expected job loss could change that.

Tuesday June 30, 2009

Consumer Confidence - an alleged indicator of willingness to spend and a leading indicator of GDP - was unexpectedly down in May.  The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index decreased 18.1 percent year-over-year.  This is another of these "the good news is that the bad news is not so bad" datum.

The daily tech is overbought and due for a bearish correction.  The weekly will likely remain bullish.  This would mean that we do not see falling rates until two weeks from now.

Monday June 29, 2009

Since everyone is closed Friday July 3 for the July 4 holiday the BLS Employment Situation Report will come out on July 2.  Consensus is -350,000.  The Unemployment Rate of 9.4% in May was the highest since August 1983 and the Unemployment Rate will get media attention this month as well.  Treasury yields are down a bit in early trading continuing the bullish technical cycle.