Friends
Wow! The non-farm payroll number was better than expected. Again, consensus expectations were for about 170,000 new jobs, but today’s number came in at 236,000 new jobs created last month. The unemployment rate fell to 7.7%. All in all, a very pleasant report. Now how did the markets respond? Well, bonds sold off a bit but stocks rallied from the opening. You may wonder if this “good” news on employment was good for stocks or bad. Remember, stocks have been fueled by the Fed’s easy money policies, and we know that when things get better the Fed will take the punch bowl away. On the other hand, if we are to embark on a long term economic and stock market expansion, it must be fueled by real economic improvement at some point, not just easy Fed money. Today’s report seems to have hit the sweet spot. Not too good and not too bad. Just about right. The Fed must stay involved at this point, but the economy seems to be healing.
As for stocks, for the day the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 67 points to close at 14,396. The S&P 500 was up 6 points (not yet at a new high) to finish the week at 1551. Gold was up $2 to trade at $1577 per ounce, while oil was up $.23 to trade at $91.79 per barrel WTI.
Have a nice weekend everyone.
