Markets Nervous Ahead of Obama’s Speech

Yesterday was an excellent day for the stock market. However, given the recent volatility trend and trading range, we may give it back very soon. What I’m waiting for is a catalyst that will push the market out of its 1,120-1,230 trading pattern. President Obama’s jobs speech may help, but the market doesn’t seem to fare well whenever a government official speaks.

The markets were a little surprised this morning when the jobless claims number rose by 2,000 to 414,000 last week. The Street was expecting 405,000. The other big news was that the OECD cut its economic growth forecast for the U.S. economy for the third quarter to 1.1% and 0.4% for the fourth quarter.

I want to reiterate my point that the evidence of a Double Dip recession is far from conclusive. For example, Tuesday’s ISM Services index came in at 53.3 which was an increase over July and it was higher than Wall Street’s forecast. Also, the July trade deficit shrank by 13.1% to 44.8 billion. Exports rose 3.6% to $178 billion which is the highest ever.

Posted by on September 8th, 2011 at 9:28 am


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