Market comments for Oct. 7th, 2011

The Unemployment Rate stayed steady at 9.1% for September, as reported this morning. Non-Farm payrolls came in better than expected with a gain of 103,000 new jobs created. And on Thursday morning, Initial Jobless Claims came in at 401K for the week of 10/1.

This morning I have included several charts showing that while there is much volatility, there also is a pattern to the moves. AS you can see from the charts below, we are forming lower highs and new lower lows in this market. Will this continue? It's anybody's guess. I guess it will and while todays market looks tired with the recent gains, we may have put in the highs and are headed lower.


Also today I am posting from the Chart of the Day, which shows how slow this recovery has been compared to other recoveries.

"Today's chart puts the latest data into perspective by comparing nonfarm payrolls following the end of the latest economic recession (i.e. the Great Recession -- solid red line) to that of the prior recession (i.e. 2001 recession -- dashed gold line) to that of the average post-recession from 1954-2000 (dashed blue line). As today's chart illustrates, the current jobs recovery is much weaker than the average jobs recovery that follows the end of a recession. Today's chart also illustrates that the current jobs recovery has been slightly stronger than what occurred following the recession of 2001. However, the already modest upward trend has slowed significantly over the past five months."

Market comments for June 2nd UPDATED

The market on Wednesday finally dropped given the recent poor economic news. I have said that I thought there would be lower highs and lower lows going forward and today we seemed to affirm that prediction with a drop of 288 points on the Dow. Below, I have added a 3 month chart of the Dow, which shows new lower lows, signified by Blue arrows and new lower lows, signified in Red arrows.


Thursday will show the release of Initial Jobless Claims, Productivity, Factory Orders and Unit Labor Costs. On Friday the Unemployment rate for May will be released as well.

UPDATED June 2nd at 5:38am PST

Initial Jobless Claims for the week of May 28th came in higher than expected again for the 4th straight week at 422K, while expectations were for only 400K. It seems that it is going to take a long time before we get back below 400K as were were over a month ago. I would expect this data will show that the Unemployment rate ticks up for May to possibly 9.1%. If it does this, that would be the second month in a row where the rate has increased again.