We have a heavy palette of economic data this Thursday morning, and not just in jobless claims. Pre-market futures are still fairly calcified ahead of next week’s tariff placements, but incremental adjustments can be seen following these early-morning reports. The Dow is -33 points at this hour, the S&P 500 is -8 and the Nasdaq is -43.
Weekly Jobless Claims Remain Steady
On the Initial Jobless Claims front, we stay remarkably stable: 224K is 2K below expectations, and 1K below the revised 225K from last week. Going way back to last fall, there was a momentary worry that new jobless claims were shooting up to a new level, but that has proved to be temporary.
Continuing Claims keeps in its wax/wane existence intact, dialing back again from the near-1.9 million level: 1.856 million longer-term claims is the new headline, notably lower than the downwardly revised 1.881 million from the previous week. We have hit 1.9 million (a psychological number: it basically points toward 2 million, which would bring us to a different reality), but only once in 2025, back in mid-January.
Advance Trade Balance in Goods Moderates
February Advance Trade in Goods remains in the deep depths: -$147.9 billion is today’s headline. Good news? It’s better than the -$156 billion reported the previous month. Bad news? It’s now only the second-worst monthly trade deficit on record. Like everything else, seemingly, tariff policy will bring some sway to these important metrics.
Advance Retail Inventories have swung to a positive: +0.1% for February from -0.1% in January. On the Advance Wholesale side, +0.3% moderates from the +0.8% previously reported, which was the highest level since the summer of 2022. These figures are basically a taste of what we can expect from the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) report due out Friday morning.
Final Q4 GDP: +2.4%
In additional pre-PCE news, U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Q4 2024 came in at +2.4%, bringing the average GDP level to +2.5% for the year. This is down from the relatively strong +3.2% for full-year 2023 but higher than the +2.3% reported for all of 2022. Projections for the current year, again dependent on tariff policy, are currently sub-2%.
Q4 Consumption reduced from +4.2% previously reported to +4.0% now. The pre-PCE Price Index came down 10 basis points from +2.4% to +2.3%. These moderating levels are benign — they do not impact the narrative of the 2024 economy, which was solid. Aside from some autumn scares in employment and elsewhere, we enjoyed steadiness last year, even as price levels remained on the high side.
What to Expect from Today’s Stock Market
We do have another economic print coming out after today’s opening bell: Pending Home Sales. These are expected to swing positive to +1.0% from -4.6% the prior month. New Home Sales, reported earlier this week, came in-line with expectations and higher than the previous month.
We’ll also hear from more Fed presidents today, specifically Tom Barkin (Richmond, VA) and Susan Collins (Boston). It will be newsworthy if either of them speak independently of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference last week. Tacking back to the tariff story, until these measures are implemented, no one knows exactly what to expect.
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Jobless Claims Decreased More Than Expected
We have a heavy palette of economic data this Thursday morning, and not just in jobless claims. Pre-market futures are still fairly calcified ahead of next week’s tariff placements, but incremental adjustments can be seen following these early-morning reports. The Dow is -33 points at this hour, the S&P 500 is -8 and the Nasdaq is -43.
Weekly Jobless Claims Remain Steady
On the Initial Jobless Claims front, we stay remarkably stable: 224K is 2K below expectations, and 1K below the revised 225K from last week. Going way back to last fall, there was a momentary worry that new jobless claims were shooting up to a new level, but that has proved to be temporary.
Continuing Claims keeps in its wax/wane existence intact, dialing back again from the near-1.9 million level: 1.856 million longer-term claims is the new headline, notably lower than the downwardly revised 1.881 million from the previous week. We have hit 1.9 million (a psychological number: it basically points toward 2 million, which would bring us to a different reality), but only once in 2025, back in mid-January.
Advance Trade Balance in Goods Moderates
February Advance Trade in Goods remains in the deep depths: -$147.9 billion is today’s headline. Good news? It’s better than the -$156 billion reported the previous month. Bad news? It’s now only the second-worst monthly trade deficit on record. Like everything else, seemingly, tariff policy will bring some sway to these important metrics.
Advance Retail Inventories have swung to a positive: +0.1% for February from -0.1% in January. On the Advance Wholesale side, +0.3% moderates from the +0.8% previously reported, which was the highest level since the summer of 2022. These figures are basically a taste of what we can expect from the Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) report due out Friday morning.
Final Q4 GDP: +2.4%
In additional pre-PCE news, U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for Q4 2024 came in at +2.4%, bringing the average GDP level to +2.5% for the year. This is down from the relatively strong +3.2% for full-year 2023 but higher than the +2.3% reported for all of 2022. Projections for the current year, again dependent on tariff policy, are currently sub-2%.
Q4 Consumption reduced from +4.2% previously reported to +4.0% now. The pre-PCE Price Index came down 10 basis points from +2.4% to +2.3%. These moderating levels are benign — they do not impact the narrative of the 2024 economy, which was solid. Aside from some autumn scares in employment and elsewhere, we enjoyed steadiness last year, even as price levels remained on the high side.
What to Expect from Today’s Stock Market
We do have another economic print coming out after today’s opening bell: Pending Home Sales. These are expected to swing positive to +1.0% from -4.6% the prior month. New Home Sales, reported earlier this week, came in-line with expectations and higher than the previous month.
We’ll also hear from more Fed presidents today, specifically Tom Barkin (Richmond, VA) and Susan Collins (Boston). It will be newsworthy if either of them speak independently of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference last week. Tacking back to the tariff story, until these measures are implemented, no one knows exactly what to expect.