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We had bounced off early-morning lows in today’s pre-market trading, but it was very temporary and indexes look what looked like it may have been a hard turn lower. It’s not: things are now pretty steadily in the red. The Dow is -160 points at the hour, the S&P 500 is -23 points and the Nasdaq -120. The small-cap Russell 2000 is down a deeper percentage, -14 points.
Fed day yesterday gave us a pretty decent rally, but market indexes have a ways to go to turn everything around, and market sentiment does not seem to have warmed back up much. Fed Chair Powell declared the economy fine still, with plenty of “unknown unknowns” (to quote Don Rumsfeld, not Powell) regarding tariff policy, among other things, in the near future. It was a ray of sunshine, with a “to be continued…” at the end of it.
Weekly Jobless Claims Remain within Agreeable Range
This Thursday morning’s Initial Jobless Claims keep the narrative that we continue to enjoy a healthy labor market in this country. As we’ve said for more than a year now, lots of the people we’re not seeing having lost their jobs took their pink slips straight to Retirement. That goes for the oldest Gen-Xers, too, by the way.
Anyway, 223K new jobless claims filed last week is still an historically low number. It’s up slightly from the revised 221K from the previous week. It’s also roughly the mid-level going back to last fall, when one outlier +260K new jobless claims caused some tension regarding the labor market. Six months later: so far, so good.
Continuing Claims bobbed up again to 1.892 million, from a downwardly revised 1.859 million the previous week. We’re again range-bound on these numbers, with the occasional (and often revised away later) 1.9 million print. When wee first climbed to these levels, the natural fear was that 2 million longer-term jobless claims can’t be far behind. So far, it has been.
Philly Fed Keeps Positive for 2025
The Philly Fed index for March came in at 12.5 this morning, higher than the 10.0 analysts were expecting and the 18.1 posted a month ago. After a rough patch of between the summer of 2022 and winter of last year, Philly Fed numbers have mostly gained traction. The months to come, like in so many other areas, will be key to this metric’s trajectory.
Olive Garden Parent Company Misses Q3 Earnings
Darden Restaurants (DRI - Free Report) , the parent restauranteur of Olive Garden, Longhorn and also Ruth’s Chris Steakhouses, missed earnings by a penny in its just-reported Q3 report, to $2.80 per share. (This is still up from the $2.62 per share posted in the year-ago quarter.) Revenues of $3.16 billion missed the Zacks consensus $3.21 billion (but still up from $2.97 billion a year ago).
This is the fourth miss in the last five quarters for Darden. Yet pre-market shares have shot up +6% on the news, as the company promises growth ahead with the recent acquisition of the Chuy’s franchise. For more on DRI’s earnings, click here.
Image: Bigstock
Pre-Markets Lower; Economic News Decent
Thursday, March 20, 2025
We had bounced off early-morning lows in today’s pre-market trading, but it was very temporary and indexes look what looked like it may have been a hard turn lower. It’s not: things are now pretty steadily in the red. The Dow is -160 points at the hour, the S&P 500 is -23 points and the Nasdaq -120. The small-cap Russell 2000 is down a deeper percentage, -14 points.
Fed day yesterday gave us a pretty decent rally, but market indexes have a ways to go to turn everything around, and market sentiment does not seem to have warmed back up much. Fed Chair Powell declared the economy fine still, with plenty of “unknown unknowns” (to quote Don Rumsfeld, not Powell) regarding tariff policy, among other things, in the near future. It was a ray of sunshine, with a “to be continued…” at the end of it.
Weekly Jobless Claims Remain within Agreeable Range
This Thursday morning’s Initial Jobless Claims keep the narrative that we continue to enjoy a healthy labor market in this country. As we’ve said for more than a year now, lots of the people we’re not seeing having lost their jobs took their pink slips straight to Retirement. That goes for the oldest Gen-Xers, too, by the way.
Anyway, 223K new jobless claims filed last week is still an historically low number. It’s up slightly from the revised 221K from the previous week. It’s also roughly the mid-level going back to last fall, when one outlier +260K new jobless claims caused some tension regarding the labor market. Six months later: so far, so good.
Continuing Claims bobbed up again to 1.892 million, from a downwardly revised 1.859 million the previous week. We’re again range-bound on these numbers, with the occasional (and often revised away later) 1.9 million print. When wee first climbed to these levels, the natural fear was that 2 million longer-term jobless claims can’t be far behind. So far, it has been.
Philly Fed Keeps Positive for 2025
The Philly Fed index for March came in at 12.5 this morning, higher than the 10.0 analysts were expecting and the 18.1 posted a month ago. After a rough patch of between the summer of 2022 and winter of last year, Philly Fed numbers have mostly gained traction. The months to come, like in so many other areas, will be key to this metric’s trajectory.
Olive Garden Parent Company Misses Q3 Earnings
Darden Restaurants (DRI - Free Report) , the parent restauranteur of Olive Garden, Longhorn and also Ruth’s Chris Steakhouses, missed earnings by a penny in its just-reported Q3 report, to $2.80 per share. (This is still up from the $2.62 per share posted in the year-ago quarter.) Revenues of $3.16 billion missed the Zacks consensus $3.21 billion (but still up from $2.97 billion a year ago).
This is the fourth miss in the last five quarters for Darden. Yet pre-market shares have shot up +6% on the news, as the company promises growth ahead with the recent acquisition of the Chuy’s franchise. For more on DRI’s earnings, click here.
Check out the updated Zacks Earnings Calendar here.
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