Friday will be a big day this week, and not just because people will be getting ready to celebrate the Labor Day Holiday. The Labor Department’s Jobs Report for August will be released at 8:30am ET. July’s report showed glimmers of hope for an improving job market: 247,000 jobs lost in July versus economists’ expectations of 328,000 jobs lost, the smallest loss since August 2008. Even better, the Unemployment Rate dropped to 9.4%, from the prior month’s reading of 9.5%, which broke a streak of 9 straight monthly increases. It will be important to see if these trends continue.
Speaking of the job market, it will also be important to keep an eye on Thursday’s weekly Initial Jobless Claims Report. The recent trend of higher than expected Claims is disappointing after what appeared to be a steady decline in Claims earlier this summer. We’ll want to take notice on Wednesday of the Meeting Minutes from the latest Federal Open Market Committee meeting. Any comments regarding future inflation could move the markets.
Remember: Weak economic news normally causes money to flow out of Stocks and into Bonds, helping Bonds and home loan rates improve, while strong economic news normally has the opposite result. As you can see in the chart below, Bonds and home loan rates faced an extremely tough triple layer of resistance at the end of last week. With no Treasury auctions ahead this week, I will be watching closely to see if Bonds and rates can bust through this resistance and improve any further.
Chart: Fannie Mae 4.5% Mortgage Bond (Friday Aug 28, 2009)
Leave a Reply