Premarkets were up nicely at +0.30% amidst of mixed news where the US Initial Jobless Claims reported in at 330K versus the 335K expected and 345K prior. (see report below)
The Market place opened up as expected, leaving opening gaps, but started to melt downward immediately to where the Blue Chips were headed for flat territory. The Blue Chip averages are very near testing the previous highs and testing that level that will probably be the force that drive the markets in the next few days.
By 10 am the averages were all in the green on low to moderate volume trending but trending down.
Earlier this week I thought we would see a negative market by tomorrow and now it doesn’t look like that will be the case. However, watching the markets tradingsideways for the past 12 sessions is not exactly helpful in deciding the next trading move.
Part of the problem is the number of souls working part-time and those not working at better paying jobs being counted as full-time workers therefor skewing the statistics. The BLS U-6 unemployment probably reflects the true state of affairs at 13.2% blowing away the more optimistic U-3 at 7.0%.
“Volatile” Jobless Claims Drop To Lowest Since November But 104k Drop Off Emergency Rolls
The Department of Labor states that there is no indication that the winter storm affectedthis week’s numbers (though they are likely to remain volatile through January) as jobless claims dropped from a ubiquitously revised-upwards 345k to 330k this week – the lowest level since the end of November (even as NSA data jumped from 451k to 486k on the week).
Continuing claims rose modestly back into the middle of the range of the last 4 months just like initial claims. The emergency claims data is lagged so we will not see the impact of congressional decisions on that until 2 weeks from now but its worth noting that the data we already have shows 104,000 dropping off the rolls.
California, Pennsylvania, and Michigan topped the initial claimants list with California worse than this time last year.
