Friday, February 5, 2010

Jobs Report and how to trade the stock market


Here comes the job report and of course the market will react to the headline accordingly. However, the headline number of an additional 824,000 jobs that we will see is already built into prices. That headline came out earlier in the week... (if I could find the article I'd include here but can't find it just now). With today’s report, the government will also issue revisions to payroll figures going back to 2005. The annual benchmark update, which aligns the data with corporate tax records and covers the period from April 2008 to March 2009, will also be announced. The Labor Department estimated in October that payrolls for the 12 months would be cut by 824,000. In any event due to yesterday's drop and depending on the real report underlying numbers, not this revisions number,

Wall Street economists expect the January report will show a tiny increase of 5,000 jobs. That would be only the second monthly gain since the recession began. But it probably wouldn't be enough to hold down the unemployment rate, which is forecast to rise to 10.1 percent. We've seen institutional money getting out ot the market starting last week and continuing this week. After the initial plunge this morning and unless there is another accompanying heretofore unknown negative headline we will get a rally presumably based on the real January report as mentioned above to be a gain of a few jobs.

Just guessing here but a move to 1050-1046 as I suggested yesterday to Trader 2010 participants should be here at the open... I suppose it could get worse to a low of 1030. But since that headline 824,000 number will bring in lots of new short side players, (this is the cruelty of the market) and considering the plunge all week long by institutional sellers I'm looking for a sharp rally back to at least our opening price if not to yesterday's close of 1061. These are the days hedge funds live for in that they helped drive prices down and will now take advantage of the new sheep coming into the market and buy this market.