Market Mover Wednesday: Weekly jobless claims, personal income/spending and durable goods…
Update: Weekly claims dropped to 466,000, continued claims 5.423 million
Oct personal income up 0.2%, personal spending up 0.7%
Durable Goods down 0.6%
Gold just hit another record $1181 an oz
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Another heavy day for data with light volume expected…
…Weekly jobless claims are expected at 8:30 a.m., along with October durable goods, personal income, and consumer spending. Consumer sentiment is released at 9:55 a.m. and new home sales are released at 10 a.m. Jobless claims could be below 500,000 for the first time in months.
Stocks finished slightly lower Tuesday, after shaking off a triple digit Dow loss. The Dow was down 17 at 10,433, and the S&P 500 was down less than a point at 1106. The worst performers were the financials…
Weekly jobless claims rise more than forecast – last week revised higher; Moody’s says US could lose AAA rating without deficit cuts..
Stock futures pulled back from their early morning highs Thursday as the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits rose more than economists expected last week….
…Weighing on stocks, the U.S. Labor Department said initial claims for jobless benefits rose by 11,000 to 531,000 in the week ended Oct. 17. The previous week’s level was revised from 514,000 to 520,000.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had expected only a slight increase of 4,000, with the report serving as another sign of tough times for the jobs market….
Moody’s tells the WH and Congress to STOP SPENDING (in so many words, lol, we need to get the deficit down and no SANE person would raise taxes in a recessionary, zero job growth environment, right? Bueller? Bueller?!):
The United States, which posted a record deficit in the last fiscal year, may lose its AAA-rating if it does not reduce the gap to manageable levels in the next 3-4 years, Moody’s Investors Service said on Thursday.
The U.S. government posted a deficit of $1.417 trillion in the year ended Sept. 30 as the deep recession and a series of bank rescues cut a gaping hole in its public finances…
Update: DOW closes down 203-ISM well below expectations, 30 yr bond hits 4.00%, pending home sales rocket -Market Mover Thursday: Weekly Jobless claims rise..
Update: 4:54 pm EST: DOW closes down 203 to 9509.28; S & P down 27.23 to 1029.85, NAS down 64.94 to 2057.48
Update 1:22pm EST:
DOW now down 176.85 to 9535.43
S & P off 23.29 to 1033.79
NAS down 58.05 to 2066.37
30 yr now 3.95%!
10 yr 3.19%
Update: ISM well below expectations 52.6, that is a DROP from August reading of 52.9, thus delta going wrong way…DOW now down 82 to 9630…
but pending home sales JUMP (IMO off the pending END to the homebuyer tax credit, ends Nov 30th) markets ricocheting off the data…
Pending Home Sales rocket, NAR says it is due to paperwork backlogs wha?
Okay NAR says pending home sales UP but NOT NECESSARILY CLOSING, ahh funding and appraisal disputes abound, NAR says sales up on short sales pending for ‘complex appraisal rules’.:
up 16% in the West
up 8.2% in the NorthEast
up 3.1% in Midwest
up 0.8% in the South
‘unexpectedly’ (Only to the Hopium Smokin’ KoolAid Drinkin’ Pundits is this ‘unexpected’)
This is the weekly jobs number, the big one, monthly August jobs data will be released tomorrow.
Breaking on CNBC-
Weekly jobless claims (week ending 09/26) rise 17,000 to 551,000
Personal spending up 0.3%– 1.3% all Clunkers
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance rose to a seasonally adjusted 551,000 in the week ending Sept. 26 from a revised 534,000 in the previous week. Analysts polled by\ Reuters were expecting claims of 530,000, which would have been unchanged from the previously reported figure…
..Government data on Wednesday showed spending dropped at a 0.9 percent annual rate in the second quarter after rising 0.6 percent in the January-March period…
Jim Rogers joins MiM’s bandwagon in a call we are ‘facing retro 70s inflation’
The US faces high inflation because of the weak dollar and the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing money to counter the effects of the crisis, legendary investor Jim Rogers told CNBC Thursday. Price rises in the US are already steeper than the inflation rate reported by the government, Rogers added.”There’s no question the US is vulnerable to hyperinflation down the road or certainly the inflation we saw in the 1970s, I would expect that to come back in the foreseeable future, certainly in the next few years,” he said.
“The true inflation rate in America? It’s certainly at least 6 or 7 percent, the US government lies about it, as you know, everybody who shops knows that prices are up, everybody except the US government, and I wish we knew where they shopped so we can shop there too and get good prices.”
Rogers repeated his view that the Fed’s quantitative easing program is “debasing the currency” and said he was “extremely worried” about the fate of the dollar over the long term…..
Waiting for September ISM release..
Market Mover Thursday: August Housing construction up, weekly jobless claims falls, continuing claims rise…
CNBC is ecstatic, MiM was hoping new housing construction would stay low so we could, you know, work off some foreclosure inventory. The seasonally adjusted weekly jobless claims are down, last week revised up (again and this week will no doubt be raised up next week, !) Don’t forget the double dip, mind the gap following 3Q earnings season folks….just MiM’s opinion…
The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly fell last week, data on Thursday showed, while there was a rise in the number of those still on the benefit rolls after an initial week of aid.
Meanwhile, new U.S. housing starts and permits rose in August to their highest level since November, lifted by a rebound in multifamily homes.Initial claims for state unemployment insurance declined to a lower-than-expected seasonally adjusted 545,000 in the week ended Sept 12 from 557,000 the week before, the Labor Department said.
CNBC not talking much about the continuing claims which rose far higher than forecast:
…Continued claims of people still on jobless aid after an initial week of benefits increased by 129,000 to 6.230 million in the week ending Sept 5, the latest for which data is available. It was the largest one week gain since late June, when continued claims advanced by 180,000. Analysts had forecast continued claims would be 6.10 million…
The delta for continuing claims is still headed in the wrong direction…maybe Congress could focus on JOBS and not health care…just a suggestion…
Update:Market Mover: Meredith Whitney – Home Prices may fall another 25%…
Update: Second video clip courtesy CNBC, this has the money quote on the coming second leg down in home prices..
Vodpod videos no longer available.
“There’s no doubt that home prices go down dramatically from here,” Meredith Whitney, of the Whitney Advisory Group, told CNBC
Meredith Whitney is IMO the best financial analyst on the street…
Vodpod videos no longer available.
Home prices in the US could fall by another 25 percent because of high unemployment and another leg down will come for stocks, banking analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC Thursday.
“No bank underwrote a loan with 10 percent unemployment on the horizon,” Whitney said. “I think there is no doubt that home prices will go down dramatically from here, it’s just a question of when.”
Local governments and states are chronically under-funded and “most states are under water,” adding to the problem of low private consumption, she said.
“If you look at the drivers for unemployment I don’t see that reversing very soon,” Whitney said.
If consumers were to decide to spend, “that would be a game-changer,” but it would be an unnatural thing to do in a recession, she said.
“A lot of themes are constant, which is the US consumer and the small business doesn’t have any credit, credit is still contracting,” Whitney said.
Consumer debt and consumer credit have dropped according to the latest figures which also show that people have been spending more from their debit cards than from their credit cards.
“Obviously that doesn’t bode well for spending,” Whitney said….
Weekly Jobless claims slightly lower, long term unemployment continues to drop as people lose bennies, trade deficit widens:
The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits fell last week to 550,000, according to a government report on Thursday that also showed the number of those collecting long-term aid tumbled.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected initial claims to drop to 560,000, after reaching 576,000 the prior week, which had previously been reported as 570,000.Continued claims fell to 6.088 million in the week ended Aug. 29, the latest for which the data is available, from 6.247 million the prior week. That was the lowest level since the week ended April 4.
…Although the drop in jobless claims indicates a healthier labor market, “we haven’t seen hirings pick up yet. We might have the worst of the firings over but the companies are not confidant enough in hiring,” said John Canally, economist at LPL Financial in Boston.
Meanwhile, a separate report showed that the U.S. trade deficit widened the most in more than 10 years in July as imports grew a record 4.7 percent on resurgent U.S. demand for foreign cars, consumer goods and oil, a government report showed on Thursday.
The trade gap expanded 16.3 percent in July to $32.0 billion, the biggest month-to-month increase since February 1999….
Market Mover Thursday: Weekly Jobless Claims Fall…4 wk average rises..
4 week average is still inching up..let’s see what tomorrow’s monthly job report shows, high hopes and low expectations….
…Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits fell 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 621,000 in the week ended May 30, the Labor Department said. The week covered the Memorial Day holiday, which could have had an impact on the data.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast new claims slipping to 620,000 from a previously reported count of 623,000.
The number of people staying on the benefit rolls after collecting an initial week of aid fell 15,000 to 6.74 million in the week ended May 23, the latest week for which the data is available….
...However, the four-week moving average for new claims, considered to be a better gauge of underlying trends as it smoothes out week-to-week volatility, rose 4,000 to 631,250 in the week ending May 30.
Productivity, Hours worked and labor costs:
…non-farm productivity rose at a revised 1.6 percent annual rate, the fastest since the third quarter of 2008. This was well above initial estimates of a 0.8 percent increase published last month and the 0.6 percent drop in the fourth quarter.
…Hours worked plunged at a 9 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the largest decline since the first quarter of 1975. Hours worked in manufacturing tumbled at an annual rate of 19.5 percent, the biggest quarterly drop on records dating back to 1987.
Unit labor costs, a gauge of inflation and profit pressures closely watched by the Federal Reserve, increased 3.0 percent in the first quarter, a touch above Wall Street’s estimates for a 2.9 percent advance…
Update: New Home Sales rise 0.3% in April, March revised to show a SERIOUS SLIDE in March dropping 3.00%…Market Movers Thursday: Economic Data; Treasury Auctions, Fed Buying
Update 2: New Home Sales rose a mere 0.3% in April… Pffffft!!, and March revised lower, but of course!:
The Commerce Department said sales rose 0.3 percent to a 352,000 annual pace, from a downwardly revised 351,000 in March. March sales were revised to show a 3 percent decline, which had been reported as a 0.6 percent slide. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast sales at a 360,000 rate in April…
Update: Economic Data in– Jobless claims drop but continuing claims hit yet another record, Treasury action later today:
The Labor Department reports that the number of initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to a seasonally adjusted 623,000, from a revised figure of 636,000 in the previous week. That was below analysts’ expectations of 635,000.
..The number of people continuing to receive unemployment benefits increased to 6.78 million, the largest total on records dating back to 1967 and the 17th straight record week…
Durable goods orders rise but past numbers revised lower, anyone see a pattern emerging?
April’s 1.9 percent increase in durable goods orders was the biggest percentage advance since December 2007, when orders rose 4.1 percent, the Commerce Department said.However, March orders were revised sharply lower, falling 2.1 percent from the previously reported 0.8 percent decline…
Durable good orders, new home sales and weekly jobless claims data Thursday morning.
..Weekly claims are expected to come in at 625,000, down from last week’s 637,000…
Art Cashin on Treasury auction Thursday:
…”The one I’m most worried about” is Thursday’s Treasury auctions, Cashin said. “It’s kind of a strange one,” as the Federal Reserve is expected to buy Treasurys that will mature in three to five years.
Wednesday’s spike in yields, especially on the 10 yr, concerns over dropping refis as mortgage rates climb with the long end of the curve and the apparent failure of the FED quantitative easing to control mortgage rates, they cant control the long end, inflation is coming ….
CNBC:
…A selling spree in Treasurys pushed rates higher, taking the yield curve to its steepest on record as spreads between the 2-year and 10-year widened by over a dozen basis points on Wednesday alone.The 10-year saw its yield move above 3.70 percent, after trading at 3.55 percent the previous day. The selling wave hit bonds shortly after 1 p.m., even after the auction of $35 billion in 5-year notes was well received…
..Traders are bracing for more of the same Thursday. The Treasury is auctioning another $26 billion in notes, this time 7-years. The heavy issuance – more than $100 billion this week alone – has been pressuring the market…
Update: The Rickster: Market Mover Thursday: Weekly Jobless Claims…continuing claims rise to 6.662 million…
Heeeere’s Rickster, telling it like it is:Vodpod videos no longer available.
Data is in, weekly slightly lower but the continuing claims are still climbing:
Rick Santelli had a great segment this morning on this BS rally built on absolutely nothing, will get it up asap…
The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless aid fell 12,000 last week, Labor Department data showed on Thursday, while so-called continued claims rose to a fresh record as the recession battered employment.
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits declined to a seasonally adjusted 631,000 in the week ended May 16 from a revised 643,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said…
..The number of people staying on the benefits roll after drawing an initial week of aid increased by 75,000 to a more-then-forecast 6.662 million in the week ended May 9, the most recent week for which data is available. Analysts estimated so-called continued claims would be 6.65 million..
Moderate in the Middle 