Friends
The much anticipated non-farm payroll number was somewhat of a best of both worlds or Goldilocks number. Last month 175,000 new jobs were created in the United States (yes, that is better than the number I had guessed, for entertainment purposes only), which was just about as expected. The number was just good enough to keep “the economy is getting better” crowd happy, and not too good as to have the Fed begin to take the punch bowl away too soon. As a result, stocks were up from the beginning of trading and held those gains into the close.
For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 207 points to finish the day at 15,248. The S&P 500 was up 20 points to close at 1643. Gold was down $37 to trade at $1378 per ounce, while oil was up $1.38 to trade at $96.14 per barrel WTI.
It looked like we were in store for 3 down weeks in a row before yesterday’s reversal and today’s follow through. The trading range this week was huge with wild swings and impressive reversals. We now have the jobs report behind us, so it will be interesting to see what traders focus on next week. The bears had something going this week, but couldn’t finish the deal (break 1570 on the S&P). S&P 1624 had become overhead resistance at midweek, but the bulls charged through that like a hot knife through butter today. Sets up for interesting trading next week. Stay tuned.
If my non-farm payroll guess had been on target, I was going to pick the winner of the Belmont for you this weekend. Oh well.
Have a great weekend everyone.
