Friends,
The non-farm payroll number was a pleasant surprise this morning as the U. S. economy produced 200,000 new jobs in the month of December. The unemployment rate fell to 8.5%. Good day for the markets, right? Wrong. It looks like the traders made all their buys earlier in the week as the Dow Jones Industrial Average limped to a loss of 56 points for the day to close at 12,359. The S&P 500 was down 3 points to finish the day at 1277. For the week, both the Dow and the S&P were up over 1%, so we’ll take it. Gold was down $2.50 to close near $1617 and oil was flat closing near $101.77 per barrel WTI.
I would not read too much into today’s action as once again traders were grumpy about the Euro continuing to fall. Just like last year, we are still held hostage to what transpires in Europe on a day to day basis. In the short run the bulls need to get through 1286 on the S&P to get any real footing and eventually 1300, which could present a formidable barrier to the upside.
I am going to leave it there for today. You can read our 1st quarter outlook next week as we will be sending it out on Monday.
Have a nice weekend everyone.
