Friends
When all was said and done, this was a very good week on the domestic economic front as we got good news on the manufacturing and service sectors, housing and finally this morning on jobs. Yes, even though we only got 114,000 new jobs created last month (remember we mentioned 113,000 was the expectation), today’s report was a good one as it showed the unemployment rate coming down to 7.8% and previous months job numbers were revised upward. The overall strength of the report really did surprise economist and analysts. If this was an election year, there would probably be accusations that these numbers were actually doctored to make the picture look a little better for the President just in the nick of time. Oh wait…
After some tasty gains early in the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up a modest 34 points to finish the day at 13,610. The S&P 500 was down a fraction to close at 1460. Gold was down $14 to trade at $1782 per ounce, while oil got clobbered again falling $1.74 to trade at $89.97 per barrel WTI. Maybe we are reversing the pattern that we saw all summer, where stocks were down every Monday only to rally by Friday. After such good economic news this week, today’s action was a little disappointing, but could have been influenced by both Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley predicting gloom and doom for the fourth quarter.
We’ll have our 4th quarter outlook ready next week. Be sure to look for it. Of course, clients will receive a hard copy with their quarterly review.
Have a great weekend everyone.
