Stocks End Mixed, All Eyes On This Morning's Employment Report Stocks closed narrowly mixed yesterday with the Dow finishing modestly in the green, while the S&P and Nasdaq finished slightly in the red. With one more trading day to go, the big three indexes are all poised to close higher for the week. And it's notable that both the S&P and Nasdaq made new all-time highs this week. The biggest piece of news yesterday came from overseas with the European Central Bank (ECB) cutting interest rates by 25 basis points to 3.75%. The move was expected. But it was yet another Central Bank that has begun cutting rates (Canada, Sweden and Switzerland have already begun the easing process). The spread between the U.S. Federal Reserve and the ECB is now at 163 basis points with the U.S. Fed Funds rate at a midpoint of 5.38%.
Fed watchers expect the Fed to finally begin cutting rates sometime in September or November. (Although, some have speculated that this could be postponed until sometime next year, given that progress on inflation appears to have slowed or even stalled, and the economy and labor market are still so resilient.) We'll get another look at the labor market with this morning's Employment Situation Report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The consensus is for nonfarm payrolls to come in at 188,000 (168K in the private sector and 20K in the public), with the unemployment rate staying the same at 3.9%. Last Wednesday's ADP Employment Report forecast private payrolls at 188K, before falling short with a reported 152K. Although, the ADP report has a spotty track record of predicting what the BLS report will say. We'll also get the Wholesale Inventories report, and Consumer Credit report today.
In other news yesterday, we got Weekly Jobless Claims, which showed new claims rising 8,000 to 229K. (However, the 4-week moving average fell to 222.25K from last week's 223K.) We also got the Challenger Job-Cut Report which declined to 63,816 announced layoffs vs. last month's 64,789. But the jobs report that everybody really cares about is this morning's Employment Situation Report. That comes out at 8:30 AM ET. Best,  Kevin Matras
Executive Vice President, Zacks Investment Research | 
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