Friends
Well, is everyone ready for the election – to be over? Yes, the political storytelling is getting real tiresome, but by next Wednesday it will all be behind us (at least I hope). Anyway, this morning’s employment report confirmed that things continue to get just slightly better as the 171,000 new jobs created was better than had been expected. The unemployment rate ticked back up to 7.9% from 7.8% mainly due to more folks coming back into the job seeking pool. Once again, the domestic economic picture is getting a little better just as companies seem to be reporting the most disappointing earnings we have seen in quite some time. As we wondered out loud yesterday, which of these is telling us the real story?
As for the markets, traders of stocks seemed uninspired about the employment numbers and decided to give back most of yesterday’s gains (remember the good news is bad news dilemma). For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 139 points to close at 13,093. The S&P 500 was down 13 points to finish the day at 1414. Gold was very weak, down $37 to trade at $1678 per ounce, while oil was down $2.12 to trade at $84.97 per barrel WTI. Once again, the 1425 area served as resistance on the S&P 500 and we may need to wait until after the election to see which way stocks will break. Did markets give back today because good economic news means less QE? How about a surprising Romney win- would that lead to a higher dollar, less QE and a selloff in the markets? Hmmm, a lot to ponder over the weekend.
It was a very full week of economic information and corporate earnings, not to mention the mess on the East coast. Of course, now we look forward to Tuesday’s election and all of its ramifications. We expected some volatility leading into the election, and that is what we have seen. Now let’s get the election behind us and then we will know what we have in front of us for the next four years. Next week should be “fun”.
Have a great weekend everyone.
