Friends
Good news on the employment front (the ADP private payroll number was much hotter than expected) was bad news for stocks today. Add to that comments from Fed officials confirming the higher for longer stance with regards to interest rates and the bulls didn’t really have a chance. You know the “good news is bad news” narrative where strength in jobs and/or the economy means the Fed stays hawkish for longer, and as we know it doesn’t pay to fight the Fed, hence the difficulty for stocks right now. This will change at some point, but no one knows when. We’ll talk more about that in next week’s quarterly outlook.
As for today by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 339 points to finish the day at 32,930. The S&P 500 was down 44 points to close at 3,808. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 153 points to close at 10,305. Gold was down $20 to trade at $1,838 per ounce, while oil was up $.85 to trade at $73.69 per barrel WTI.
Tomorrow, we get the non-farm payroll number. Expectations are that we will see that about 185,000 new jobs were created in December and the unemployment rate holding steady at 3.7%. Let’s see if tomorrow’s number is as hot as today’s ADP number. Stay tuned.
Have a nice evening everyone.
