Goldilocks Says this Report is Just Right

The American jobs data, though as questionable as always, has the market moving higher Friday. I suppose traders are happy that at least there was no blatant deterioration in the news. Neither was there a miss that might reinforce the fear of a Fed shift to hawkish monetary policy. I guess Goldilocks would say this jobs report was just right.

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Market ETF	June 7 10:30 AM	Year-to-Date
SPDR S&P 500 (NYSE: SPY)	+1.0%	+15.4%
SPDR Dow Jones (DIA)	+1.1%	+15.7%
PowerShares (QQQ)	+0.9%	+12.2%

Economic Events

The monthly Employment Situation Report was printed this morning for May. The data leaned to the positive, as far as the market was concerned, but as always, this highly suspect data point has its issues and conflicts. Job additions were reported much better than in April, as the economy added 175K nonfarm payrolls in May. The result beat economists’ expectations for an increase of 167K by a little bit, but not enough to stir up excitement about economic recovery. Still, the increase was better than April’s revised increase of 149K, which was cut from its initially reported addition of 165K. Private Nonfarm Payrolls, excluding the public sector government jobs, increased by 178K in May, in line with expectations and better than April’s revised level of 172K (revised down from 176K).

The Unemployment Rate was expected to stay at 7.5%, but it actually increased a bit to 7.6%. It makes sense, given what has been happening in the labor force count over the years. Eventually these people come back to the government for some sort of assistance, getting back on the radar. Look for our follow up report on the real unemployment rate.

Average Hourly Earnings was unchanged in May, after increasing by 0.2% in April. Economists expected the same increase in May. The Average Workweek increased as expected by a tenth of a point to 34.5 hours. My feeling here is that this is seasonal, despite the so-called seasonal adjustments to the data.

Consumer Credit data will be reported by the Federal Reserve for the month of April at 3:00 PM ET. Economists expect an expansion of credit of $14 billion for the month, versus March’s expansion of $8.0 billion. You will want to look a little closer though, as this data has been influenced by increases in student loans. Non-revolving credit has expanded heavily, partly on auto sales and also aided by some life in housing. Revolving credit expansion seems to be tiring though, and that is not a good sign for economic health, because when Americans are able to get credit, they get it.

Overseas Markets

EUROPE	9:44 AM ET	ASIA/PACIFIC	CLOSE
EURO STOXX 50	+0.5%	NIKKEI 225	-0.2%
German DAX	+0.6%	Hang Seng	-1.2%
CAC 40	+0.4%	S&P/ASX 200	-0.9%
FTSE 100	+0.5%	Korean KOSPI	-1.8%
Greek ASE	+0.7%	BSE India SENSEX	-0.5%

President Obama will meet with China’s President Xi Jinping starting on Friday to ironically discuss Chinese hacking on America. Meanwhile, American tech firms are all denying today giving the government access to data on Americans, after the leak about Verizon (NYSE: VZ) allowing the NSA access to info.

Asia, as always, traded on Thursday’s western market guidance, while Europe benefited from the American economic data and a rebound after its own oversold position from the rest of the week.

Commodity Markets (9:35 AM ET)

WTI Crude	-0.6%
Brent Crude	-0.4%
NYMEX Natural Gas	+0.3%
RBOB Gasoline	-0.5%
Gold Spot	-1.9%
Silver Spot	-2.9%
COMEX Copper	-1.5%
CBOT Corn	+1.1%
CBOT Wheat	+0.5%
CBOT Soybeans	+0.6%
ICE Cocoa	-0.7%
ICE Sugar	-0.5%
ICE Orange Juice Conc.	+0.3%
CME Live Cattle	-0.1%

The dollar is rallying today on the US jobs data. The PowerShares DB US Dollar Index Bullish (NYSE: UUP) is up roughly 0.2% at this early hour.

Corporate Events

The corporate wire has analysts and investor meetings at SAIC (NYSE: SAI), OneBeacon Insurance (NYSE: OB) and White Mountains Insurance (NYSE: WTM). The EPS schedule has reports from Christopher & Banks (NYSE: CBK), Crossroads Systems (Nasdaq: CRDS), Dago New Energy (NYSE: DQ), JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS) and Oil-Dri Corporation (NYSE: ODC).

The day’s biggest gainers and losers at 10:15 AM ET include:

BIGGEST GAINERS	% Gain	BIGGEST LOSERS	% Decline
ZVV (NYSE: ZVV)	+100%	First Security (Nasdaq: FSGI)	-56%
Textura Corporation (Nasdaq: TXTR)	+54%	Northwest Biotherapeutics (Nasdaq: NWBOW)	-24%
Orchard Supply Hardware (NYSE: OSH)	+30%	S&W Seed (Nasdaq: SANWZ)	-20%
JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS)	+16%	Universal Business Payment (Nasdaq: UBPS)	-18%
Ambient (Nasdaq: AMBT)	+21%	Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM)	-17%
Waterstone Fin’l (Nasdaq: WSBF)	+14%	TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO)	-16%
Thor Industries (NYSE: THO)	+13%	Prima BioMed (Nasdaq: PBMD)	-14%
Rosetta Genomics (Nasdaq: ROSG)	+11%	Quiksilver (NYSE: ZQK)	-14%
Oclaro (Nasdaq: OCLR)	+9%	James River Coal (Nasdaq: JRCC)	-10%
Netlist (Nasdaq: NLST)	+5%	Direxion Daily Gold (Nasdaq: NUGT)	-7%

Please see our disclosures at the Wall Street Greek website and author bio pages found there. This article and website in no way offers or represents financial or investment advice. Information is provided for entertainment purposes only.