Will we blow our jobs numbers?
Even if we do get a big number, you never know how much of that is due to massaging the data so it would be premature to swallow the initial market move until we have time to get a good look at the size (168,000 expected) and decide if it’s too big (over 250,000) or too little (under 125,000). Under 125,000 and we’ll have to bring in the Fed to see if we can do something to grow these numbers and over 250,000 is going to be too big for any more QE – no matter how much we beg for it.
I did have some really brilliant analysis but there was a laptop mishap (I’m on the road) and I lost it so now we’ll just have to wait and see what the NFP number is and, rather than speculate – we can see which way things break after the report.
Just ahead of the Data we’re about flat in our futures but oil just tested the low of $100.50, where we are long now in the Futures and, of course, THRILLED with our various shot positions in the Futures ($105, $104, $103.50…) as well as our various USO shorts and SCO longs – congrats to all the faithful on that oil trade!
8:30 Update: Jobs came in at a totally limp 115,000 and that is 10,000 below the line that I said would be bad enough to be GOOD – as it’s so anemic it should get the Fed just a little closer to considering additional QE. HOWEVER – the Unemployment Rate was DOWN to 8.1% and that BS number is NOT Fed-friendly but, so far, after a very quick move down, the markets are loving the low headline number and rallying to the morning’s highs on expectation of more bail-out bucks heading our way.
I don’t think these numbers are good at all and it’s just more evidence that the economy is not picking up and still has significant weakness. If suckers want to buy into these terrible numbers – let them, it’s a good chance for us to add some more shorts because your entire bullish premise cannot be that the economy sucks so badly that our Uncle Ben might give us another Trillion to play with to distract us for another year.
We didn’t allow ourselves to get sucked…
