Friends
Well, the non-farm payroll number that we received this morning was dreadful. Remember, the markets were expecting somewhere around 200,000 new jobs to have been created in March, but the number came in at only 88,000. Yes, both the January and February numbers were adjusted higher, which is good, but there is no way to sugar coat today’s number. It was bad. Now, of course, the blame was directed at the sequester, the payroll tax hike, and/or Obama- care, but the simple fact is that we are not creating jobs at a brisk enough pace. How did the markets react?
At first, stocks plummeted 150 points and spent most of the morning mulling around that area. But as the afternoon wore on, the bargain hunters started to appear and stocks climbed back to respectable areas. For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 40 points to close at 14,565. The S&P 500 was down 6 points to finish the day at 1553. Gold was up $26 points to trade at $1578 per ounce, while oil was down $.24 to trade at $93.02 per barrel WTI.
For all the gloom and doom this week, with weak economic numbers and that crazy little guy in North Korea, stocks ended the week just barely to the downside. The seesawing action continues, and the internals have weakened as we gave traders plenty of reasons to sell this week, yet the damage was limited. Let’s see what next week has in store for us.
Have a great weekend everyone.
