The Market Is Up on Lower Jobless Claims

The stock market is up a bit this morning. The good news was that jobless claims fell by 12,000 to 367,000. This is the tenth-straight week that jobless claims have been below 400,000. That’s a good number but the real test will come tomorrow morning when the Labor Department releases the jobs report for January.

The other bit of economic data showed that worker productivity rose by 0.7% (annualized) in the fourth quarter. That’s down from 1.9% in the third quarter. On CNBC, Steve Liesman said that it’s probably best to view this data as the average of the third and fourth quarters. I think he’s right.

Ben Bernanke will be speaking before Congress later today. We also have two more earnings reports: Fiserv ($FISV) and Nicholas Financial ($NICK). Fiserv will report after the close but NICK will report during the day. The stock has been climbing higher recently. I think we’ll see more good news from them.

Posted by on February 2nd, 2012 at 9:47 am


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