Thursday, March 21st, 2024
Pre-market futures continue rejoicing off a positively-received Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy decision to keep interest rates steady while continuing to keep three quarter-point rate cuts on its dot-plot calendar this year. If markets had been bracing for worse news than this, they didn’t do a good job of showing it: markets were up Tuesday — the day before the FOMC decision — as well. Ahead of the open, we’re currently +125 points on the Dow, +25 on the S&P 500 and +188 on the Nasdaq. Good days for the market.
This morning, Initial Jobless Claims continue to come in lower than projections: today’s headline 210K is down from the 213K expected and the upwardly revised 212K the previous week. This matches the 210K we saw in the first week of March, which is about where we’ve been averaging so far this year. The previous six months had averaged around 220K new claims, and the last time we registered that high for a week was in the beginning of January. Good days for near-term employment.
Continuing Claims also came down from expectations: 1.807 million was up from the downwardly revised 1.803 million previously, but down from the originally reported 1.811 million that week. In 2023, we appeared to be on a beeline toward 2K longer-term jobless claims, but only notched above 1.9K once, back in November of last year. The last time we saw a string of 1.9+ million weeks on continuing claims was back in November of 2021. Good days for long-term employment.
March Philly Fed numbers are out this morning, and of late this manufacturing survey of the sixth-largest city in the U.S. have often been dismal. This morning, we came in at +3.2, up from the expected -5.0, and notched the first back-to-back positive months on the Philly Fed index in two years. The near-term high was +7.7 back in August, but nine of the past 12 months have shown a decline, with April of 2023 a notably lousy -26.3. Good times for (regional) manufacturing.
And the Current Account Balance for Q4 is out this morning, with -$194.8 billion — while clearly a steeply negative number — improves from the consensus estimate -$209 billion and incrementally better than the -$196.4 billion the previous quarter. This is the lowest deficit we’ve seen since Q1 2021. Considering everything — all the spending policies to firm our economy coming out of the Covid pandemic and keeping the economy from weakening beyond — we appear to finally be returning back to pre-Covid levels. Good times, relatively, for U.S. debt, as well.
After today’s open, we’ll see S&P Flash PMI figures for Manufacturing and Services for March — both of which are expected to tick down but remain above the growth threshold of 50. Leading Economic Indicators and Existing Home Sales, both for February, are also out after today’s opening bell. Also, the IPO for Reddit (RDDT) gets underway today: at $34 per share, the social media company comes in valued at $6.4 billion.
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Good Days for the Market, Employment & More
Thursday, March 21st, 2024
Pre-market futures continue rejoicing off a positively-received Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) monetary policy decision to keep interest rates steady while continuing to keep three quarter-point rate cuts on its dot-plot calendar this year. If markets had been bracing for worse news than this, they didn’t do a good job of showing it: markets were up Tuesday — the day before the FOMC decision — as well. Ahead of the open, we’re currently +125 points on the Dow, +25 on the S&P 500 and +188 on the Nasdaq. Good days for the market.
This morning, Initial Jobless Claims continue to come in lower than projections: today’s headline 210K is down from the 213K expected and the upwardly revised 212K the previous week. This matches the 210K we saw in the first week of March, which is about where we’ve been averaging so far this year. The previous six months had averaged around 220K new claims, and the last time we registered that high for a week was in the beginning of January. Good days for near-term employment.
Continuing Claims also came down from expectations: 1.807 million was up from the downwardly revised 1.803 million previously, but down from the originally reported 1.811 million that week. In 2023, we appeared to be on a beeline toward 2K longer-term jobless claims, but only notched above 1.9K once, back in November of last year. The last time we saw a string of 1.9+ million weeks on continuing claims was back in November of 2021. Good days for long-term employment.
March Philly Fed numbers are out this morning, and of late this manufacturing survey of the sixth-largest city in the U.S. have often been dismal. This morning, we came in at +3.2, up from the expected -5.0, and notched the first back-to-back positive months on the Philly Fed index in two years. The near-term high was +7.7 back in August, but nine of the past 12 months have shown a decline, with April of 2023 a notably lousy -26.3. Good times for (regional) manufacturing.
And the Current Account Balance for Q4 is out this morning, with -$194.8 billion — while clearly a steeply negative number — improves from the consensus estimate -$209 billion and incrementally better than the -$196.4 billion the previous quarter. This is the lowest deficit we’ve seen since Q1 2021. Considering everything — all the spending policies to firm our economy coming out of the Covid pandemic and keeping the economy from weakening beyond — we appear to finally be returning back to pre-Covid levels. Good times, relatively, for U.S. debt, as well.
After today’s open, we’ll see S&P Flash PMI figures for Manufacturing and Services for March — both of which are expected to tick down but remain above the growth threshold of 50. Leading Economic Indicators and Existing Home Sales, both for February, are also out after today’s opening bell. Also, the IPO for Reddit (RDDT) gets underway today: at $34 per share, the social media company comes in valued at $6.4 billion.
Questions or comments about this article and/or author? Click here>>