The JOB NUMBERS and the BULL / BEAR debate continues. Some articles on the subject. Some Bullish and some Bearish; you must decided!
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/
Closed out all long postions on Friday. On the sidelines for now. I'm waiting to go long again. It was not a positive trade for me. However, I'm a conservative investor. I'm like a little mouse eating away and the edges of a big piece of cheese in a BIG TRAP. I don't want to stick my head to far in the trap. I'll stay around the edges and nibble and nibble and nibble until I get my fill. Seven to Ten percent per year is my goal. I'm pretty close to retirement so I only go 100% long on extremly oversold conditions. When conditions are netural or overbought I wait!
Good Investing / Trading !
Weak jobs may mean Fed brakes -- for slow economy
By Emily Chasan
15 minutes ago
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Friday's anemic jobs report shows why investors should be careful what they wish for.
Sometimes they just might get it.
For months, stock investors have been betting that the U.S. equity market will take off once the Federal Reserve stops raising interest rates. That has driven many market players to take the view that any sign of weakness in the economy is good news for stocks because borrowing costs will ease, helping corporate bottom lines.
Hardly surprising then that stock index futures initially bolted higher Friday morning when the U.S. Labor Department reported that only 75,000 jobs were added to U.S. nonfarm payrolls in May -- or 100,000 jobs short of what Wall Street had forecast.
There's just one problem.
Weaker job growth may mean a weaker business environment and could spell trouble ahead for corporate profits. If the economy's growth is slowing, investors may have been betting in the wrong direction.
"The anticipation is that the Fed is going to be stepping aside in June, and the equity market's kneejerk reaction is that the Fed stepping aside is a good thing," said Paul Nolte, director of investments at Hinsdale Associates in Hinsdale, Illinois.
"Unfortunately, the reason the Fed may step aside is because growth is slowing, which will eventually hit earnings," he said.
In fact, earnings growth is expected to slow sharply this quarter. Earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index (^SPX - news) are expected to grow just 7.2 percent in the second quarter, down from growth of more than 14 percent in the first quarter, according to Reuters Estimates.
What's more, expectations for second-quarter profit growth
have been diminishing in recent weeks after peaking at 7.7 percent in early May. That's not the best of signs.
ABOUT FACE!
On Friday, it didn't take long for stock investors to correct their take on the jobs data.
Stocks fell in less than 30 minutes after the opening bell, with market participants citing the weak jobs report as the main culprit.
That marked a 180-degree turn from the moments after the government reported that U.S. job growth in May was its slowest since October, in the aftermath of the hurricanes.
"Disappointing jobs growth in April and May indicate the economy is slowing more than Wall Street analysts and Federal Reserve policymakers have anticipated," said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Business.
"The slowdown in the housing market and higher gas prices have dampened auto and other retail sales, and the jobs data indicate the economy is headed for much slower growth and perhaps a downturn," added Morici, who formerly was a chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Despite the weak jobs growth picture, the U.S. unemployment rate slipped to a five-year low of 4.6 percent in May, the Labor Department said.
The drop in the monthly jobless rate followed a report on Thursday showing that planned layoffs fell 10 percent in May to the lowest level in 5-1/2 years, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., an employment consulting firm.
But a low unemployment rate doesn't mean an economic slowdown is not coming.
"Whenever the economy makes the transition from faster to slower growth, there is a brief period of confusion about what's really going on," said Bernard Baumohl, executive director of the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton Junction, New Jersey. "We'll get simultaneous reports showing economic activity to be fairly robust ... as well as evidence of sluggish growth ..."
"But today's weak employment report represents one of the more concrete signs that we are about to enter a sustained economic slowdown in the second half," Baumohl added.
