The employment picture improved in January.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010. 9:15 am.
The first of this week’s two important jobs reports was released this morning, and presented an encouraging picture.
The ADP Employment Report was that only 22,000 jobs were lost in the private sector in January. It was the fewest number of monthly jobs losses since January 2008, 24 months ago, which was the last time the ADP report showed jobs being added in the private sector.
In addition, last month’s report that 84,000 jobs were lost in December was revised to only 61,000 jobs being lost.
The more important report will be the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Report, which includes federal, state, and local government jobs, and the unemployment rate, which will be released Friday morning. Economists are forecasting that report will show the jobs decline has ended, that it show 20,000 new jobs were created in January.
Yesterday in the U.S. Market.
Another triple-digit positive day right out of the gate. Volume picked up some, to 1.18 billion shares traded on the NYSE. The market was up from the open and closed on its high.
Once again the blue chips of the Dow and S&P 500 were more positive than the more speculative Nasdaq stocks, and the small stocks of the Russell 2000.
Yesterday’s intraday chart:
The Dow closed up 111 points, or 1.1%. The S&P 500 closed up 1.3%. The NYSE Composite closed up 1.3%. The Nasdaq closed up 0.9%. The Russell 2000 closed up 0.8%. The DJ Transportation Avg. closed up 0.8%.
Asian markets closed up sharply last night, following the U.S. rally.
Among individual countries:
Australia closed up 1.0%. China closed up 2.4%. Hong Kong closed up 2.2%. India closed up 2.1%. Indonesia closed up 0.9%. Japan closed up 0.3%. Singapore closed up 1.6%. South Korea closed up 1.2%. Taiwan closed up 1.6%.
If you’d like to see a three-month chart of any or all of the above indexes click here, and then click on any of the markets in the similar list at the left side of the page it takes you to.
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Markets this morning.
European markets were up earlier but have given up the gains, and are now down fractionally, on average of about 0.3%.
Oil is up $.08 a barrel at 77.31 at the moment.
Gold is down $4 an ounce at $1,112, but bouncing back a big $33 for the week so far after plunging two weeks in a row along with the stock market.
Markets in the U.S.
This week’s fairly heavy schedule of potential market-moving economic reports continues.
The schedule ends on Friday with what we always refer to as The Big One!, the Labor Department’s monthly Employment Report, this one for January. We call it the big one because it has the record for most often coming in with a surprise in one direction or the other that sends the Dow in a one to three-day triple-digit move in one direction or the other.
To see the full schedule of the week’s reports click here, and look at the left side of the page it takes you to.
Yesterday’s report, Pending Home Sales Index, was a positive, rising 1% in December, after plunging 16.4% in November. It does indicate the continuing importance of the bonus to home-buyers program, which was set to expire in November, and then extended to April 30 of this year.
The focus now shifts to jobs reports. As noted at the top of the post, the first of the reports, the ADP Jobs Report, released at 8:30 am, was an encouraging report.
But the pre-open indicators were not impressed, in fact weakened further.
Our pre-open indicators this morning are somewhat negative, pointing to the Dow being down 30 points or so in the early going, not meaningful in regard to direction at the close.
Stock Market Patterns.
The ‘monthly strength period’ was due to begin last Thursday, and to run through tomorrow, Feb. 4. The next weekly pattern is that next week is the week before this month’s options expirations week, and the week before tends to be negative.
Interesting Charts of the Morning.
Just an update of the renewed rally in relation to the potential short-term resistance at the 21-day m.a.
The Dow closed yesterday at 10,297. The 21-day m.a. on the Dow is at 10,449, 150 points higher.
Please scroll down to recent ‘Interesting Charts of the Morning’ and commentary.
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