Thursday, September 15, 2016
For all the various data points released before trading floors opened this Thursday morning, it’s tough to see a new narrative emerging in any particular direction. August Retail Sales were pretty bad compared with expectations, but Initial Jobless Claims remained in a good range. Two regional manufacturing reports — Empire State and Philly Fed — showed opposite results: the New York read was negative while the Philadelphia report was positive.
Jobless claims for the month rose by 1000 from an unrevised 259K last week, keeping exactly at the median of the 4-week moving average, which is a healthy range for the U.S. labor market. Continuing claims reached 2.143 million, which is actually a little better than expected.
Retail Sales, however, failed to reach the rather paltry expectation of -0.1% by hitting -0.3%. Ex-auto, this number does get to -0.1%. The negative revision for July went from 0% to -0.1%. What this is depicting is a slowdown in retail sales from the first half of the year, and the numbers point to cheaper gasoline and fewer cars sold in the month as the main culprits.
Producer Price Index (PPI) was neutral and in-line with expectations at +0.1%. This is unchanged from the previous month. Ex-food and energy costs, the PPI rises to +0.3%, again suggesting some moderate deflation in energy and food pricing. These numbers are also fairly consistent with the mildly recessive Import and Export Prices yesterday.
The Empire State read was -1.9%, and this comes after a quite negative -4.2% the previous month. The manufacturing index conducted by the New York Federal Reserve remains in contraction territory, which may feed into next week’s Fed decision whether or not to raise interest rates. Positive growth came a couple hours down I-95 with the Philly Fed read for September, up 12.8 from 2 in August.
So it looks like a wash, overall. Market futures were in positive territory going into this data dump today, and they are down a bit since, though still positive. What was an S&P 500 up near +10, now it’s at +3.25. The Dow had been +76 but is now +36. The Nasdaq showed 21 points in the green, but is now at +13.75. Will the upward pressure continue into the trading day, or will we see these figures keep coming down?
Mark Vickery
Senior Editor
Image: Bigstock
Big Data Dump Before Opening Bell
Thursday, September 15, 2016
For all the various data points released before trading floors opened this Thursday morning, it’s tough to see a new narrative emerging in any particular direction. August Retail Sales were pretty bad compared with expectations, but Initial Jobless Claims remained in a good range. Two regional manufacturing reports — Empire State and Philly Fed — showed opposite results: the New York read was negative while the Philadelphia report was positive.
Jobless claims for the month rose by 1000 from an unrevised 259K last week, keeping exactly at the median of the 4-week moving average, which is a healthy range for the U.S. labor market. Continuing claims reached 2.143 million, which is actually a little better than expected.
Retail Sales, however, failed to reach the rather paltry expectation of -0.1% by hitting -0.3%. Ex-auto, this number does get to -0.1%. The negative revision for July went from 0% to -0.1%. What this is depicting is a slowdown in retail sales from the first half of the year, and the numbers point to cheaper gasoline and fewer cars sold in the month as the main culprits.
Producer Price Index (PPI) was neutral and in-line with expectations at +0.1%. This is unchanged from the previous month. Ex-food and energy costs, the PPI rises to +0.3%, again suggesting some moderate deflation in energy and food pricing. These numbers are also fairly consistent with the mildly recessive Import and Export Prices yesterday.
The Empire State read was -1.9%, and this comes after a quite negative -4.2% the previous month. The manufacturing index conducted by the New York Federal Reserve remains in contraction territory, which may feed into next week’s Fed decision whether or not to raise interest rates. Positive growth came a couple hours down I-95 with the Philly Fed read for September, up 12.8 from 2 in August.
So it looks like a wash, overall. Market futures were in positive territory going into this data dump today, and they are down a bit since, though still positive. What was an S&P 500 up near +10, now it’s at +3.25. The Dow had been +76 but is now +36. The Nasdaq showed 21 points in the green, but is now at +13.75. Will the upward pressure continue into the trading day, or will we see these figures keep coming down?
Mark Vickery
Senior Editor