Well, yesterday was fun!

As we expected, the massive pre-market pump job failed once again to push our breakout levels and that led to 6 of our 7 day trades coming out winners in Member Chat. We’re still waiting on the 7th, our MOS puts that were meant to be a weekend hold anyway so not really a day-trade but it was lots of fun after sitting mainly on the sidelines this week waiting for a good opportunity to jump in. Our plan from the morning post to buy out our DIA putters worked perfectly as well and we even went bullish on the DIA’s into yesterday’s stick save so we’re not even going to complain about that nonsense today!

It will take more than a stick to save the markets today if the jobs report is a disappointment. GS, BCS and JPM have all lowered their loss predictions from around 370,000 lost jobs to 250-275,000 job losses and DB has gone completely off the wall with a prediction of just 150,000 losses! As the US is gearing up for the 2010 census and as no one understands the mystical “seasonal adjustment” game and as GS pulls all the strings in government, we are hard-pressed to dismiss this seemingly ridiculous prediction. What do the big 3 market manipuluators have to gain by raising expectations so high just ahead of the actual numbers? Perhaps they have already finished their selling and have now fipped negative, looking to initiate a massive sell-off as jobs disappoint? Or, perhaps, they are brilliant analysts who are well ahead of a number that will, finally, give us our long-awaited break out.

[Total workers on nonfarm payrolls]If the figures do surprise, it won’t be in a statistically significant way. A payroll decline of 450,000, which would mortify Wall Street, would mean a 0.3% decline in total payrolls. A market-friendlier decline of 150,000, on the other hand, would represent a 0.1% decline. Percentagewise, the difference is a crapshoot. At some point, jobs data should improve meaningfully. The four-week moving average of new jobless claims is down 10% from late June. That translates into about 200,000 fewer job cuts a month, estimates High Frequency Economics economist Ian Shepherdson.”The risk of a substantial upward surprise on payrolls over the next few months has risen,” Deutsche Bank economist Joseph LaVorgna wrote recently.

China lost a little faith this morning as the Hang Seng fell right to the 2.5% rule (down 523…
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