Friday, January 15, 2010
Bad Data Happy Markets?
The Bulls overlooked economic data Thursday, pushing stocks higher once again . The Dow added 29.78 points, closing at 10,710.55. The SPX rose 2.78 points to end on1,148.46. We are in the green and looking ok.
The economic data was not good before the bell. Jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 9 rose by 11,000 to a level of 444,000. However, this didn’t stop the four-week moving average from falling for the 19th straight month. This moving average fell by 9,000 this past week to a level of 440,750. This report comes less than a week after a disappointing nonfarm payrolls report and shows that despite improvement, the jobs market remains soft.
There was also disappointing news about retail sales in December. Economists were looking for retail sales to rise 0.4 percent compared with November, but they actually fell 0.3 percent. Retail sales less autos also declined, down 0.2 percent. However, compared with the year ago period, sales were higher by 5.4 percent in December, up from the 2.5 percent gain seen in November.
Despite all this the markets went up. The only theory for this I heard on CNBC is that whilst the data is bad, interest rates will remain low...and that is good.
Intel reported great results and JP Morgan are reporting before the market open. Lets see how this will affect the markets.
Until next time.
The economic data was not good before the bell. Jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 9 rose by 11,000 to a level of 444,000. However, this didn’t stop the four-week moving average from falling for the 19th straight month. This moving average fell by 9,000 this past week to a level of 440,750. This report comes less than a week after a disappointing nonfarm payrolls report and shows that despite improvement, the jobs market remains soft.
There was also disappointing news about retail sales in December. Economists were looking for retail sales to rise 0.4 percent compared with November, but they actually fell 0.3 percent. Retail sales less autos also declined, down 0.2 percent. However, compared with the year ago period, sales were higher by 5.4 percent in December, up from the 2.5 percent gain seen in November.
Despite all this the markets went up. The only theory for this I heard on CNBC is that whilst the data is bad, interest rates will remain low...and that is good.
Intel reported great results and JP Morgan are reporting before the market open. Lets see how this will affect the markets.
Until next time.
# posted by Paul @ 4:26 AM 
