My Writings. My Thoughts.

Thursday June 18, 2020

// June 18th, 2020 // Comments Off on Thursday June 18, 2020 // Daily News

Jobless claims total 1.5 million, worse than expected as economic pain persist

KEY POINTS
  • First-time claims for unemployment insurance totaled 1.5 million last week, well above the 1.3 million expected.
  • Workers receiving benefits under all programs including pandemic assistance totaled 29.1 million, a decrease of more than 375,000.
  • This was the 13th straight week that claims have totaled abov

Weekly jobless claims stayed above 1 million for the 13th consecutive week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to hammer the U.S. economy.

First-time claims totaled 1.5 million last week, higher than the 1.3 million that economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting. The government report’s total was 58,000 lower than the previous week’s 1.566 million, which was revised up by 24,000.

The elevated claims number persists even as all states have reopened to varying degrees and nonfarm payrolls grew by 2.5 million in May. Before the coronavirus, the record for a single week was 695,000 in September 1982.

“The 58K drop in claims this week is very disappointing, given that the level still remains so high; the worst single week after the crash of 2008 saw claims at 665K,” said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “It’s not clear why claims are still so high; is it the initial shock still working its way up through businesses away from the consumer-facing jobs lost in the first wave, or is it businesses which thought they could survive now throwing in the towel, or both? Either way, these are disappointing numbers and serve to emphasize that a full recovery is going to take a long time.”

Today’s Inspiration

A Deeper Level of Prayer

Asking God for what we need and want in the natural realm is definitely not wrong, but we shouldn’t have our main focus on those things. God’s Word says that He knows what we need before we ask Him (see Matthew 6:8), so all we need to do is let Him know that we’re trusting Him to take care of everything that concerns us.

After we ask God to meet our daily physical needs, we can focus the majority of our prayer time on talking to Him about our spiritual needs; things like spiritual maturity, developing and displaying the fruit of His Spirit, obedience, and walking in love, to name a few. We also have the privilege of praying for other people and being part of their victories. God is inviting us to a deeper walk with Him, and the closer we get to Him, the more our desires will become like His.

Prayer Starter: Father, thank You for hearing me every time I pray. Even though I have daily needs that I bring to You, help me grow into a deeper level of prayer where I can begin to hear and pray what’s on Your heart. In Jesus’ Name, amen.

Friday June 12, 2020

// June 12th, 2020 // Comments Off on Friday June 12, 2020 // Daily News

Dow rises 300 points as Wall Street recovers from worst sell-off since March

Stocks rose on Friday, clawing back some of the sharp losses from Wall Street’s worst day since March.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded 321 points higher, or about 1.4%. The S&P 500 gained 1.1% while the Nasdaq Composite advanced 0.9%. The major averages were off their session highs, however. The Dow had gained more than 800 points earlier in the day.

Despite those sharp gains, the major averages were all on pace to post their first weekly losses in four weeks. The Dow and S&P 500 are both down more than 5% week to date while the Nasdaq has lost 2.4%.

Investors on Friday went right back into the plays whose fates hinge on a successful reopening of the economy. Carnival Corp jumped 6.7%. United Airlines climbed 9.2%. Other winners included brick-and-mortar retailers Kohl’s. Those stocks were hit big time during Thursday’s sell-off as investors feared the reopening of the economy could be delayed by a second wave of cases.

Even after Friday’s bounce, Morgan Stanley Investment Management’s Andrew Slimmon said: “Given the magnitude of the rally, it would shock me if we had a one day sell-off and that’s it.”

“The stocks that are up the most from the lows are still the risk-on, high beta, value, small-cap stocks,” Slimmon, who is a managing director and senior portfolio manager at the firm, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Friday morning Singapore time. “They’re still the big winners and I would suspect that there’s more pain to come near-term before the market clears out kind of this excessive speculation that we’ve seen recently.”

 

Today’s Inspiration

He’ll Tell You What You Need to Know

Adapted from the resource Hearing from God Each Morning – by Joyce Meyer

Learning to hear from God and be led by the Holy Spirit is an exciting adventure. He wants to speak to you and tell you what you need to know to enjoy your life, be blessed, be wise, and fulfill the good plans He has for you. He always has something good and helpful to say, but sometimes we miss out on these things because we don’t recognize when God is speaking to us. We need to learn how to listen for and obey His voice.

Earthly parents talk to their children all the time, so why wouldn’t our heavenly Father speak to us? Good human parents don’t expect their children to know what to do if they don’t tell them, and neither does God. He wants to tell us everything we need to know in life so we can be aware and ready for what He wants us to do.

We often want to go our own way so we can do what we want to do, when we want to do it. But, when we live this way, we end up losing our way and wasting our lives. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to lead us through every day of our time on Earth, and why He’s committed to being our Comforter and our Guide, and telling us step-by-step which way to go.

Prayer Starter: Father, please help me be more attentive to Your voice, and to act on the direction You give me. Thank You for being faithful to lead me and comfort me today! In Jesus’ Name, amen.

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