Friends
Stocks experienced seesaw like action today as an early rally turned into a midday downturn, only to recover most of the losses by the close. The June ADP private payroll number came in better than expected which has market participants hopeful (I think) that tomorrow’s non-farm payroll number is going to be better than the 180,000 consensus estimate. In fact, our friends over at Goldman Sachs upped their estimate to 210,000 this morning. By the way, the weekly jobless claims was better than expected too, which may also signal tomorrow’s number might be much better than last month’s disaster. Of course, we were all just getting comfortable that another rate hike was off the table for the remainder of 2016 given Brexit and recent weak jobs data. If tomorrow’s number is strong, will that be good or bad for stocks?
Anyway, as for today, the Dow Jones Industrial was down 22 points to close at 17,895. The S&P 500 was down 1 point to finish the day at 2097. Gold was down $6 to trade at $1,361 per ounce, while oil was down $2.25 to trade at $45.18 per barrel WTI. It appears that stocks have been reacting to the daily moves in oil once again- at least in the past week or two.
As mentioned, tomorrow’s jobs data will be closely watched and likely will move markets in one direction or the other (or both). We’ll let you know how it all plays out as the week comes to a close. Stay tuned.
Have a nice evening everyone.
