Friday February 6, 2015

// February 6th, 2015 // Daily News

What investors are looking for in the jobs report

With oil stabilizing, a mixed earnings season ending and Greece concerns abating, Friday’s monthly jobs report is a key indicator for the U.S. economy.
Consensus expects creation of 230,000 nonfarm payrolls in January, with an unemployment rate holding steady at 5.6 percent and wage growth of 0.3 percent. Last month, a 0.20 percent decline, or a 5-cent drop, in hourly earnings jarred markets.
The total nonfarm payroll accounts for about 80 percent of the workers who produce the entire gross domestic product of the United States.
Traders work the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Goldman Sachs expects unemployment of 5.5 percent and wages to grow 0.4 percent, noting in a report that “calendar distortions and an unusual pattern of holiday retail hiring likely accounted for most of the downside surprise.”
However, Goldman analyst David Mericle said this week’s economic indicators argue for a weaker report overall, with expectations of nonfarm payrolls below consensus at 210,000.
More importantly, the firm expects wage growth to increase by 2.75 percent in 2015, above last year’s 1.7 increase but “still well below the 3 to 4 percent wage growth that Fed Chair Janet Yellen has identified as normal.”
Besides positive wage growth, JJ Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade, wants to see jobs growing in manufacturing, other than the typically strong job growth sectors of bars and restaurants.
Most analysts are looking beyond the actual figures to the overall trends that signify a strengthening economy.
“We are now in the longest stretch of uninterrupted job growth of 51 months,” said Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James.
Weekly jobless claims came in less than expected on Thursday, adding to the economic growth narrative.
The number of planned layoffs by U.S. employers rose to a nearly two-year high of 53,041 jobs in January, according to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The 63 percent increase from the previous month came mostly from hits to the energy sector from low oil prices.
A greater-than-expected trade deficit of $46.6 billion—the largest since November 2012—will likely weigh on U.S. GDP growth, which initially came in at a disappointing 2.6 percent for the fourth quarter last Friday.
U.S. stocks closed up more than one percent on Thursday, posting the first gains for the year. The Dow Jones industrial average closed up 211.8 points, or 1,20 percent, at 17,884.88, with Pfizer and DuPont leading gains as all blue chips advanced. The S&P 500 closed up 21.01 points, or 1.03 percent, at 2,062.52 with materials leading gains across all sectors. The Nasdaq closed up 48.39 points, or 1.03 percent, at 4,765.10.

Today’s Inspiration

Make Adjustments

by Joyce Meyer – posted February 06, 2015

Adding your diligence [to the divine promises], employ every effort in exercising your faith to develop virtue (excellence, resolution, Christian energy), and in [exercising] virtue [develop] knowledge (intelligence).
– 2 Peter 1:5

Sometimes we have to make a few adjustments in our lifestyle to follow wisdom. We may have to say no to too much activity. He¬brews 11:1 teaches that faith is the assurance of things we do not see now. But, like God, we can call “those things that be not, as though they are” (see Romans 4:17). This spiritual principle applies in the negative realm as well as in the positive realm. So we may need to make some adjustments to the things we say.

If you feel that it is hard to get up in the morning, don’t say, “I am too tired.” Get all of that weak, tired, wimpy, quitter, give-up talk out of your vocabulary. Instead, say, “Because the Lord is my strength, I can do whatever I need to do today.”

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