After a relatively benign jobs report today, the market started out in a mixed fashion and then made a strong upside advance. Both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ touched on new all-time highs while the DOW was heading within one point of the juicy number of 20,000.
At the end of today, the DOW added 64 points to close at 19,963. The S&P 500 gained 7 to 2,276 and the NASDAQ finished 33 points higher at 5,521.
The jobs report said that 156,00 jobs were created last month. This is now the sixth straight year of more than 2 million jobs being created; the longest such streak since 1999 when the economy was really booming. The prior two months were revised lower by 19,000 jobs and the unemployment rate rose a bit to 4.7% as the labor force expanded. The big story was that the average hourly earnings rose by 0.4% last month…on a year over year basis they gained 2.9%. This is the highest since May 2009 and is another example of potential inflationary pressures building within the economy. There were nice gains in retail and service sector jobs overall.
The VIX closed at 11.32, down 3% for this last day of the week. It seemed to be a battle of the DOW against the ViX today with the DOW ending up in the winner’s circle.
Bond yields started out a little lower after the jobs report but reversed course to trade at 2.42% for the 10-year Note. The dollar was also stronger again and the Euro was down slightly at 1.0528. Gold eased down to $1,173 an ounce and crude oil was flat at $53.69 a barrel.
Donald M. Selkin
These are excerpts from Don Selkin’s Daily Market Notes, abbreviated and updated with permission from the author. Don Selkin is the Chief Market Strategist at Newbridge Securities Corporation, member FINRA/SIPC and provides the Fair Value analysis for CNBC each morning. The commentary provided in this Market Letter is intended to provide our customers with timely market analysis and should not be considered a research report. This Market Letter may contain, and is limited to: Discussions of broad based indices; Commentaries on economic, political or market conditions; Technical analyses concerning the demand and supply for a sector, index or industry based in trading volume and price; Statistical summaries of multiple companies’ financial data, including listings of current ratings; and, Recommendations regarding increasing or decreasing holdings in particular industries or securities. This Market Letter does not make a financial or investment recommendation or otherwise promotes a product or service of the firm. This Market Letter contains only news, facts, and commentary on information previously reported from a news source believed to be accurate and reliable by the author. These news sources include the following: Bloomberg Financial, Reuters, and the Associated Press.