Vacation Time

I’m off to Newport this week for some sailing and to celebrate July 4th so posting will be light. There also won’t be a CWS Market Review this week. The stock market will close at 1 pm on Tuesday and will be closed all day on Wednesday. I expect trading volume to be light this week.

The big news story will be Friday’s jobs report. The last report was a dud. Wall Street currently expects 100,000 nonfarm payrolls, and the unemployment rate to stay at 8.2%. They’ll also revise previous months’ numbers.

A few weeks ago, Bernanke testified before the Joint Economic Committee and addressed employment:

This apparent slowing in the labor market may have been exaggerated by issues related to seasonal adjustment and the unusually warm weather this past winter. But it may also be the case that the larger gains seen late last year and early this year were associated with some catch-up in hiring on the part of employers who had pared their workforces aggressively during and just after the recession. If so, the deceleration in employment in recent months may indicate that this catch-up has largely been completed, and, consequently, that more-rapid gains in economic activity will be required to achieve significant further improvement in labor market conditions.

We’ll see if the sluggish trend continues. I’ll also be curious to see what Monday’s ISM report has in store. Anything above 52ish is fine. A number below that is a concern.

Posted by on July 1st, 2012 at 8:58 pm


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