Stock market hammered despite upbeat data

Still another day with investors being unable to decide whether or not they want a recovery when, in spite of a slew of very positive news, the Dow still tanked big time to the tune of 195 points.  Jobless benefits reaching a 15-year low this week was just one of the many indicators that surfaced today to point to a continuing recovery.  Thus the question was also once again raised that maybe interest rates will be raised sooner rather than later.  Apple also dragged the market down after the Apple Watch was reported to be defective.  But doesn't Apple have a very long history of having bumpy intros of its new innovations only to come out smelling like a rose later?  So there was no rational reason for all the panic selling but then no one can argue that this is a rational market of late.  The panic today was a big one with volume way above average at 7.8 billion shares.

Wall St. ends down after Fed statement, GDP data

Today was particularly volatile, with the Dow plummeting 150 points by mid-day only to recover it all by mid-afternoon, and then lose it all again in the last two hours of trading to close 74 points down.  Again, the root cause is the market's inability to decide what it wants from the recovery.  The Fed told investors exactly what they wanted to hear today -- the economy remains sufficiently unstable to warrant a continuing delay in interest rate hikes.  But then the instability became the source for concern and the index dropped again.  Yes, investors really do have to decide what they want.  A recovery means interest rates will ultimately be raised. The market doesn't want that.  But the lack of a recovery means a whole host of bad news on a variety of other issues.  Adding to anxiety was data released today that GDP, due to the harsh winter, has grown at only a 0.2% annualized rate.  Twitter had its second very bad day in a row.  After diving a whopping 24% in one day yesterday, the decline continued to the tune of another 9% today, bringing its combined two-day loss to a very bad 33%.  Everyone was waiting this week for the Fed's report and that turned out to be very positive, yet the market dropped anyway.  With market behavior being so unpredictable, it's no wonder everyone's nervous.  Volume was considerably above average at 7.2 billion shares.

Dow, S&P 500 end up with Merck, IBM; Nasdaq slips with Apple

Another very volatile day, not the least of which because Twitter's stock dropped a whopping 24% after a disappointing report published early in the day.  Even Apple had a bad time of it as, though its numbers were phenomenal, they weren't as great as investors were hoping and their stock price dipped 1.6%.  If that's not enough irrational behavior for the day, despite all the disappointing news the Dow was up 72 points, helped partly by an improving single-family home market.  All our days should be so lousy.  Volume was above average at 6.6 billion shares.

Well, the biotechs have been leading the recent record setting rallies so it makes sense that there would be a correction and that's what happened today with the entire index sinking more than 4% on disappointing reports from several major companies, not the least of which was a catastrophic 80% one-day drop in share price from Celladon Corporation which does experimental gene therapy.  The company's major product failed a critical trial which may now be spelling its doom.  One thing that is very much on investors' minds these days is the horrendous increase in drug prices this past year, something that has aroused so much suspicion that the Congress announced a while back that it was launching an investigation.  I can say from my personal experience that for 20 years I've been taking belladonna which has always been about $7 for a month's supply and it has now skyrocketed to $450 for a month's supply.  Needless, I am trying to get along without it now but am always very glad to hear that somebody is looking in to how this could be happening.  It is actually a relief that this problem is now adversely impacting stock prices so that maybe Wall Street will demand some answers.  The Dow closed down 42 points with 6.8 billion shares traded overall, making it a higher than average day.

Markets | Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:40pm EDT

Wall St. ends down as biotechs drop 4 percent

BY CAROLINE VALETKEVITCH

DJ:    18,037.97  -42.17      NAS:      5,060.25  -31.84          S&P:      2,108.92  -8.77

(Reuters) - U.S. stocks ended down on Monday, led by losses in biotech shares after disappointing news from several companies including Amgen.

The Nasdaq Biotech Index .NBI sank 4.1 percent, its biggest daily percentage loss since March 25, while the S&P Healthcare index .SPXHC, down 1.8 percent, was the biggest drag on the benchmark S&P 500 index.

Amgen shares (AMGN.O) led the S&P 500's decline, dropping 3.3 percent to $162.38 after U.S. regulators said Amgen's skin cancer immunotherapy cannot be considered for an accelerated review at this time.

Celladon Corp (CLDN.O) shares fell 80.7 percent to $2.64 and hit a record low of $2.59. It said it expected layoffs and cost cuts after the company's lead experimental gene therapy to treat heart failure failed a key trial.

Healthcare companies have been the top performers so far in 2015, helping push major stock indexes to records. Biotechs in particular have driven up the Nasdaq, which last week reached its first all-time closing high in 15 years.

The sector is being dragged down by reports of high pricing by specialty pharmaceutical companies as well as the disappointing news from Celladon and Amgen, said Paul Yook portfolio manager of biotech exchange traded funds (BBC.P) and (BBP.P) at LifeSci Partners in New York.

"Drug pricing has been a real concern for investors," he said.

The Nasdaq biotech sector briefly fell into bear market territory a year ago following a selloff in Gilead (GILD.O) shares and concerns about valuations. But analysts said for now they don't view Monday's selloff as the start of a bigger drop. The Nasdaq biotech index is up more than 50 percent since April 2014.

"This run in the biotechs is going to come to end at some point but I'm not panicking yet," said Bill Gunderson, president of Gunderson Capital in San Diego.

"I don't think you can look at what's happening today and say this is the end of the biotech sector. You might just have a big institution reallocating a little bit of money here."

The Dow Jones industrial average .DJI fell 42.17 points, or 0.23 percent, to 18,037.97, theS&P 500 .SPX lost 8.77 points, or 0.41 percent, to 2,108.92 and the Nasdaq Composite.IXIC dropped 31.84 points, or 0.63 percent, to 5,060.25.

Also in the healthcare space, Mylan (MYL.O) fell 5.7 percent to $71.72 after it rejected Teva Pharmaceutical's (TEVA.N) unsolicited $40 billion takeover offer, saying it "grossly undervalues" the company. Teva lost 4.3 percent to $61.63.

The Health Care Select Sector SPDR (XLV.P) exchange-traded fund was down 1.8 percent.

Limiting some of the day's decline, Apple (AAPL.O) shares rose 1.8 percent at $132.65 ahead of its results.

NYSE declining issues outnumbered advancers 1,923 to 1,130, for a 1.70-to-1 ratio; on the Nasdaq, 1,956 issues fell and 805 advanced, for a 2.43-to-1 ratio favoring decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 14 new 52-week highs and 1 new low; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 101 new highs and 42 new lows.

(Note: no volume stats in today’s report but other sources cited 6.8 billion as the number. This is higher than average activity.)  

Succinct Summations of Week’s Events 4.24.15 (& reading list)

Submitted for your consideration, the valued one-page eye shot of the week's happenings in finance.  This Sunday's bonus is the reading list that Barry Ritholtz posted this morning and I am including it tonight since the very first item should be of definite interest to all of us who are active investors.  Hope everyone had a great weekend!  By next weekend we'll know what's up with the dollar.

Music First, Stardom Second

For this weekend something completely different.  As you all know, I split my life between creative pursuits and business.  I have degrees in both film and business and decades of experience in both.  I have been and am a writer, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and financial manager.  I worked in Hollywood for 13 years and spent ten years producing films and videos here in the metro area.  I have spent years working as a manager in the finance departments of both the 40th largest and 16th largest corporations in the United States (in L.A.) and have started and run two small film/video production companies and two non-profits in the 25 years that I've been back here in Michigan.

Tech triumvirate propels Nasdaq, S&P to record highs

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft all reported in glowing Q1 reports way topping expectations and the results were more record highs with the Nasdaq jumping 36 points and the Dow 21 points.  Two weeks ago the prognosticators were saying that Q1 earnings would be down 2.9%.  Today they have changed that prediction to 1.3%.  That number will undoubtedly change again next week when giants Apple, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron chime in giving investors the much anticipated barometer on the strong dollar.  Of course, there's also the Fed which will be meeting once again next week and will be issuing still another update on its policy positions on Wednesday.  At 6.2 billion, volume is again just about average which means investors remain less than enthusiastic and more than a little skeptical about the continuing streams of positive reports.

Nasdaq sets closing record

Yesterday the Nasdaq closed just 13 points shy of its all time record set in March 2000 just before the big dot.com crash.  Today history was made when the index gained another 21 points to achieve another all-time high, its first since 2000, propelled by overall robustness in the tech sector with the rise of biotech, social media and smartphones with Apple leading the way.  Also aiding the rally were good Q1 reports from Google, Microsoft and Amazon.  Is this something to be concerned about?  Is anyone anticipating another crash?  Not at all.  As today's expert stated, "a lot of high-growth companies (in 2000) were selling at 200 or 300 times next year's earnings.  This is nothing like that.  This is a whole different world versus 2000."  So the Dow edged up another 20 points too.  And though Q1 has turned out better than expected (surprise, surprise), there is still a great deal of skepticism out there that this will continue through the rest of the year.  Isn't this is a sentiment that's been dominating the market for several years now, despite a mountain of empircal data to the contrary?  So today basically made the case that no matter how well Q1 turns out when the rest of the S&P reports in, investors will remain on the sidelines waiting for bad news.  Volume was a little above average at 6.6 billion.

Stocks end stronger as investors look beyond mixed earnings

Today, with the announcement of Visa's expansion into China, investors figured out that there are certain advantages to being a multinational corporation despite the strong dollar.  (Don't people know that there are always two sides to every coin and that it is never a good idea to place all your bets only on the dark side of the moon?)  This combined with McDonald's new proposal for its turnaround sent the Dow up 88 points and the Nasdaq up to just 13 points shy of its all time record that preceded the dot.com bubble in 2000.  So this so-called "mixed earnings" season suddenly didn't look so bad today, even though in my opinion the "mixed earnings" moniker is still misplaced given the fact that 72% of 121 S&P 500 companies have thus far beaten estimates, which is higher than it's been in the last four quarters.  So why these are being called mixed results is somewhat of a mystery to me, but so is market psychology as a whole.  Tomorrow's the big day when a lot more Q1 reports are due in.  Volume was just about average at 6 billion.

Earnings cloud drags down Dow; Nasdaq gains on biotech M&A

The Dow turned down 85 points today as investors continue to shake in their boots over expected poor Q1 reports due to the very strong dollar which has gained 9% since January.  This is despite the fact that to date 73% of reporting S&P 500 components have beaten earnings forecasts and despite the fact that the tech sector continues to do so exceedingly well that the Nasdaq closed just 35 points shy of an all-time high on news of a major biotech merger.  Adding to the drop was another fall in oil on news from Saudi Arabia and yet more news of a buildup in U.S. stockpiles which rose another 2.4 million barrels last week.  But at 5.9 billion shares, volume is still below average as the market continues to wait for Q1 results from some of the bigger players like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, all of whom have big multinational exposure and all of whom are expected to report later this week.

Wall Street rallies on China stimulus ahead of tech earnings

China is probably regretting its move on Friday to allow short-selling, not the best message to the send to the world about their fragile economic outlook, and which was largely the impetus for the nearly 300 point free fall on the Dow Friday.  Today they have announced the more constructive policy of making it easier for their banks to make loans in an effort to stimulate economic growth, something they should have done long ago.  So the market bounced back over 200 today.  But what everyone is really waiting for are the Q1 reports from the U.S. multinationals as it is expected to reveal that the strong dollar (which got bumped up nearly another 1/2% today) has hurt earnings.  But the tech sector is doing very well so far and that also helped boost optimism today.  So far 76% of all S&P companies that have reported have exceeded expectations, which is a higher average than normal.  But let's not get too excited.  At 5.6 billion shares, volume was very thin which means most investors remain on the fence pending the results of the multinational reports due later this week.

Succinct Summations of Week Events 4.17.15 ( + short video bonus)

Here's your weekly one-page eye shot of the significant events that shaped the world of finance in the past seven days.  This week's bonus is a short 7 minute video about information overload and how to cure it and even prevent it.  Multitasking is something that is particularly systemic to the world of finance and has for so many years been so popular that it has become virtual heresy not to practice it.  Yet I have believed for many years that not only does it not work, it does not even exist.  So I was very happy to find this video that agrees with this point of view.  It is courtesy of Professor Daniel Levitin of Canada's McGill University and a lecture he recently gave at London's Royal Society of Arts.  Lots of terrific ideas packed into 7 minutes.  Enjoy!

Global finance officials see rising risks to recovery, including possible Greek debt default

I have been endeavoring today to research why the markets so severely panicked yesterday over the problem with Greece while there are still two full months left on their debt moratorium.  Yesterday was quite a surprise since February 20th was the last time there was any significant mention of the crisis in the financial news and, at that time, everyone seemed satisfied that a deal had been reached and resolution was coming.  So what happened all of a sudden?  This article, taken today from the U.S. News & World Report web site, does a good job explaining it.

Wall Street falls steeply with China, Greece fears paramount

Let's try to make some sense out of what happened today that caused the mass panic that plunged the Dow 279 points.  First GE had a disappointing Q1 earnings report.  But isn't this the same GE that they've been saying for two weeks has been expected to have poor Q1 earnings?  And the same GE that just one week ago was the darling of Wall Street?  And then there was China that announced today a new policy allowing short selling in view of the fact that their stocks had reached a seven-year high.  Is this new policy because they expect their stocks to plummet now, which would be the only circumstance in which shorting would be a wise strategy?  And then there's Greece.  Suddenly today everyone is worried about Greece again even though on February 20th the ECB granted the beleaguered country a 4 month moratium on payments on their debt.  So barely two months in, and even though Greece has repeatedly insisted that it is taking all necessary steps to avoid default, statements that have given investors much consolation since February.  But today suddenly everyone's panicked again about a possible Grexit, though there's been nary a hint that such a drastic move is even being considered anymore.  Analysts are saying that next week is the first drop-dead date when Greece has to start making good on its commitments.  It hasn't been made at all clear why this is and whatever happened to the four month moratium which ends in June.  It will not be until next week's Q1 reports that we find out what impact if any the strong dollar has had on U.S. companies.  So what is the sense of today's massive sell off?  There is none, just more irrational investor anxiety.  At 7.1 billion shares, volume was considerably above recent averages.  All eyes now are on United Technologies, Boeing and other international companies that will be reporting next week and if their earnings have been hurt by the dollar.  Stay tuned.

Wall Street ends slightly lower as earnings worries linger

Yesterday, the Dow went up 76 points when 81% of 36 S&P companies reported Q1 earnings that exceeded expectations.  Today, despite a flurry of great news from a number of major companies including several enormously successful IPOs, an additional 16 companies reported with 76% of the total 51 companies now reporting profits that exceeded expectations.  Yesterday everyone breathed a big sigh of relief with the 81%  Today anxiety set in again with the 76%.  On a day of otherwise spectacular news when the Dow was at one point up over 100, the closing bell instead saw a 7 point loss.  Seven points isn't that much but it does illustrate the nervousness and irrationality that infects investors these days.  Today's expert from Chicago summed it all up, "It's a game.  The analysts will cut too far so the companies can beat."  So why are so many investors not hip to this game?  Volume was in line with recent averages at 6.3 billion.

Wall Street ends higher as jitters about earnings and oil recede (plus a little fun bonus for tax day)

Does it surprise anyone that of the 36 companies in the S&P that have reported thus far, 81% of the Q1 earnings have exceeded expectations?  Does it surprise anyone that investors now have greater confidence that Q1 will not be the disaster they feared and that thus shot the Dow up 76 points today.  Does it surprise anyone that, though the strong dollar is hurting U.S. companies that do business overseas, today they figured out that there are a great many other companies that are benefiting not only from the strong dollar but from the cheap oil that has resulted?  36 does not a consensus make, but it's definitely the step in the right direction that  the market was very much hoping for.  At 6.7 billion shares, volume was a little heavier than average.

Wall Street ends higher after bounce in oil prices

Chase is the first in this week reporting (you might guess) "better than expected" Q1 earnings and since expectations for Q1 have been lowered so very drastically (you might guess), Chase's stock rose 1.6% and the Dow 59 points.  Also providing stimulus was the dollar which weakened today 0.75%, though it is still up 10% for the year so far, but any little downbeat sign raises the market.  As today's expert said, "lowered expectations mean that companies can now more easily impress investors."  (Do they really believe that investors are that gullible?)  Anyway, earnings season has just started so, at 5.8 billion shares, volume remains very light until a much more solid picture of Q1 emerges.

Wall St. declines as worries about earnings deepen

GE, Intel, J&J, Chase and BofA are just a few of the major companies due to report earnings this week and the expectation that these reports will disappoint drove the Dow down 80 points.  Anxiety was further aggravated with the dollar reaching a four-week high, in fact rated at 99.99 against all other major international currencies, which pretty much makes our dollar the strongest medium of exchange in the world today.  So everyone is on pins and needles but, with very light trading at 5.4 billion, most investors are on the sidelines until these reports come in.

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 4.10.15 (& bonus)

It's time for the one-page week's summary and, for the bonus this weekend, an interesting graphic I dug up showing presidential approval ratings since Eisenhower, broken down by party.  Predictably each President has gotten high ratings by their own party, considerably lower by the opposition, with Eisenhower and Kennedy being pretty high up on the ladder as having the most approval by both parties.  The disturbing trend is how much polarization has increased, especially in the last 25 years.  Food for thought.

10 Weekend Reads

by Barry Ritholtz - April 11th, 2015, 7:00am

Good Saturday morning. Pour yourself a hot mug of Kenya AA coffee‎, and enjoy our longer form weekend reads:

• Deconstructing ShadowStats. Why is it so Loved by its Followers but Scorned by Economists? (EconoMonitor)
• How tech billionaires are using money and data to solve for death (Washington Post)
• The Secret Sauce: How Buffalo Wild Wings Turned the Sports Bar Into a $1.5 Billion Juggernaut (Bloomberg)
• How Athletes Get Great: Just train for 10,000 hours, right? Not quite. Top-shelf athletic performance may be a more complicated formula than we’ve recently come to believe. (Outside)
• Satirized for Your Consumption (The Baffler)
• How a bee sting saved my life: poison as medicine (Mosaic)
• Inside the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors: Fake news stories. Doctored photographs. Staged TV clips. Armies of paid trolls. Has Putin’s Russia developed a new kind of information warfare – fought in the ‘psychosphere’ rather than on the battlefield? Or is it all just a giant bluff? (The Guardian)
• The Pentagon’s $10-billion bet gone bad (LA Times)
• How To Be Alone: Musicians Confront Solitude (NPR)
• The True Story of Pretty Woman’s Original Dark Ending (Vanity Fair)

GE sparks broad Wall St. rally; indexes post weekly gains

As the headline says, GE was the star of the day.  It's amazing what an impact a single company can make, harkening back to days in the not too distant past when everytime Apple had a hiccup it would send the Nasdaq into seizures.  Today our star of the day did two things investors liked very much -- divested itself of a losing enterprise and bolstered its position with a $50 billion stock repurchase.  The ramifications were felt across all three indices and gave GE its biggest one day jump (10.8%) since 2009.  But at 4.7 billion shares, volume remains considerably below average as investors await the beginnings of Q1 earnings season with a number of major reports coming due next week and the expectation of a 2.9% drop in profits.  So next week will be very interesting.

Wall Street ends up on energy rebound; early earnings weak

This is how it seems to go.  Some may call this being sneaky and unethical.  Others may call it just old-fashioned CYA.  Still others will say it's proof that on Wall Street nobody knows anything.  But I've been observing quarterly results for quite a few years now and it always seems to go the same way.  In the last week or two of each quarter, the market geniuses all start predicting gloom and doom, thereby driving the prices of the stocks all down.  They predict it so severely and so seriously that it can't help but turn out to be under, often considerably under, what the actuals turn out to be.  Then when the quarterly reports come in and they mostly turn out to "exceed expectations," the stock prices go zooming back up and the market geniuses make a fortune.  Well, it happened again today with the gurus continuing to lower their expectations for Q1 results, now predicting a 2.8% fall in profits whereas in January the forecast was for a 5.3% rise.  They've done this consistently for the past several quarters and this is one of the reasons why the market rallies when the earnings reports are published.  Despite the gloom and doom, the Dow went up 56 points anyway, but not without a great deal of commotion with the day seeing a 200 point swing between the high and low.  The rise was attributed to another rally in oil and the fact that, as the forecasts keep getting lowered, investors now expect these guesses to be beaten.  The skepticism is partly justified on the basis of the strong dollar and the horrible winter hurting production and sales all around.  But my bet is that we will soon be seeing a lot of Q1 earnings reports "exceeding expectations."  Volume was average at 6 billion.

Wall Street ends with modest gains after Fed minutes

Another wild day with the Dow swinging back and forth 150 points before settling at close with a 47 point gain.  Merger activity in the healthcare sector boosted stocks earlier but then fears of a June interest rate hike caused another sell off.  The dollar gained again too which sent oil down 6.6%.  So volatility continues to dominate trading but, at least for one day, the end result was modest.  Volume was below average at 5.7 billion.

Wall Street ends down, dollar gains offset deal news optimism

A flurry of merger activity, always taken as a good sign of economic progress, pushed the Dow up a hundred points this morning only to be pushed back down later by the same economic good news once again strengthening the dollar, ending the session near flat, 5 points down to be exact.  That's the crazy environment we're in.  No matter what the news good or bad, somebody somewhere is going to take the good news as bad, and somebody somewhere else the bad news as good.  That's where all the wild swings have been coming from.  Whereas the strong dollar means solid fundamentals (always good), the currency also has the effect of weakening the many U.S. multinational companies.  Volume was just a little below average at 5.7 billion.

Wall Street ends higher as weak data reduces rate hike worries

As is so often the case, the weekend doomsayers who predicted that all of Friday's bad news would cause the bears to at long last come out of hibernation were proven completely wrong.  Evidently despite the gloomy jobs report as well as all the other lackluster data, all the negative numbers were more than trumped by new hopes that the Fed will delay interest rate hikes even longer now.  This optimism shot the Dow up 117 points and oil futures shot up over 6% on combined news that Saudi Arabia raised its prices and that the less than stellar reports raised hopes the dollar would weaken and thus ease pressure on international companies.  The New York Fed reinforced all of the above with another policy statement today to the effect that the path to rate hikes would be a shallow one.  Volume was average at 6.2 billion.

Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 3.3.15 ( & bonus)

Once again the usual Sunday night eye-shot.  Since the last big event in the world of finance was the jobs report that came out on Good Friday while the market was closed and thus we won't see the reaction until tomorrow, I thought the most appropriate bonus this week is a brief essay published Friday giving what I consider to be a pretty concise perspective on what this all important report means.  Hope everyone had a great Easter!

10 Weekend Reads

Good Saturday morning. Pour yourself a hot mug of Brazilian Arabica, and enjoy our longer form weekend reads:

by Barry Ritholtz - April 4th, 2015, 6:00am

• iPhone Killer: The Secret History of the Apple Watch (Wired)
• Renegades of Junk: The Rise and Fall of the Drexel Empire (Bloomberg)
• Wall Street Executives from the Financial Crisis of 2008: Where Are They Now? (Vanity Fair)
• The PayPal Mafia: An inside look at the hyperintelligent, superconnected pack of serial entrepreneurs who left the payment service and are turning Silicon Valley upside down. (Fortune)
• The Great Cocaine Treasure Hunt: If you knew where a million dollars’ worth of blow was buried, would you go dig it up? Rodney Hyden would. We pick up the story at this critical juncture (GQ)
• The Revolution Will Probably Wear Mom Jeans (The Baffler)
• Inside the Weird, Noble World of Autograph Collectors (Vice)
• Tech companies are sending your secrets to crowdsourced armies of low-paid workers (Fusion)
• Counter-Swarm: A Guide to Defeating Robotic Swarms (War On The Rocks)
• Six seconds that shaped 1,500 songs (BBC) see also 70 songs to celebrate Eric Clapton’s 70th birthday (Mashable)

U.S. job growth brakes sharply, clouds Fed rate hike timing

Once again the prognosticators were proven wrong when the March jobs report was released today.  They were right about the general direction but way off on the degree of the direction.  The expectation had  been for 245,000 new jobs, down 50,000 from last month.  In fact, the number was a very anemic 126,000 jobs or almost 120,000 below forecast.  It was the first time in many months that fewer than 200,000 new jobs had been added to the economy.  To add to the problem, the labor participation rate fell 1/10 of a point to 62.7% in March, returning to the 36 year low reached over a year ago.  Various factors are blamed.  The strong dollar combined with lower oil prices have resulted in drastic layoffs in energy and related industries with now 1/2 of all oil and gas rigs being idled since October.  The harsh winter has also had its effect.  The market was hoping for fewer jobs, but not nearly this many fewer.  No reaction today because of Good Friday and no one knows now what to expect on Monday.  If 245,000 had indeed been the number, there might have been a rally on Monday.  Now there are equal bets that there could be another major sell off instead.  Stayed tuned.

Wall Street climbs after two-day decline; focus on jobs data

Isn't it funny the way Wall Street works?  The jobs data looked bad when the market was down yesterday.  Today the market is up and the data looks better.  Same data, different perspective.  It's funny how success tends to be its own rationale.  So today unemployment claims fell unexpectedly and the Dow went up 65 points.  When the March jobs report comes out tomorrow, expectations are so low (50,000 fewer new jobs) that if the report comes in at all above these numbers it will be considered a strong report.  But it's doubtful the market wants a strong report as that will just be taken as further ammo for the Fed to increase interest rates after all.  So the hopes really are for the 50,000 fewer new jobs and that will probably cause another rally.  We'll find out Monday since the markets are closed for Good Friday.  Volume was just a little below average at 5.9 billion.

Wall St. declines after data; automakers fall

It was a day full of bad news, the worst of it being the private payrolls report that comes out ahead of the Friday's jobs report, this month showing the smallest number of new hires in more than a year, sending the Dow down 78 points.  Additionally the health care sector took a 1.2% hit, March auto sales declined, and factory activity was at a 2 year low.  Not that any of this should have surprised anyone as depressed Q1 data has been widely expected due to the extreme winter.  But the real bug to investors is the continued fear of poor Q1 earnings due to the strong dollar, with expectations that growth will have declined 2.9% from Q1 2014 which, if true, will be the worst since 2009.  However, I will once again remind everyone that this skepticism has preceded each of the past several quarters and has yet to be proven valid.  Thus, if Q1 numbers come in anywhere shy of the 2.9% projected slump, everyone will start buying again.  Volume was above average at 6.9 billion.