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Friday, September 2, 2011

Friday's Nonfarm Payroll Numbers

      Here it is. Much anticpated and ballyhooed. Expectations coming in were modest to mediocre with even a doomsday scenario of no job growth at all. As of last night, the word on the Street was

     "Friday's employment report is expected to show a gain of only 75,000 nonfarm jobs during August, with the unemployment rate steady at 9.1 percent."

     http://www.cnbc.com/id/44363145

    "Recent employment indicators suggest "zero growth in private payrolls," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank in Chicago. "If that comes to pass we are going to have some big disappointments tomorrow."

    Forewarned.... I will attempt to guess that whatever the numbers are, the market will snap back from today's selloff. As to the economy itself, I'm cautiously optimistic-not to say hoping-that we are not going into a double dip. I think a lot of the recent disappointments were for temporary issues like Japan, rising oil prices, etc.

    9:49 A.M. Est

   Wow! That was pretty bad! The above ruminations were last night. Today's report: 9.1% unemployment rate remains, no job growth for the month of August was almost the worst case scenario. There were some who had predicted job losses for August, but this is pretty close to the worst. It is actually the first time since WWII that the economy has netted zero job growth for a month.

   While these bad numbers speak for themselves and I will not digress into any silver lining in this post-in a later one maybe-I do think purely as a market watcher, the market is intriguing now. Things are so cheap. In particular BAC has caught my eye. As I mentioned in previous posts the $9 September calls were interesting. But now with the huge selloff I must confess the $8 call has seduced me. We'll see. But it is so cheap! Talk to you in a few.

    Before I go, the one more thing I'll say for my counter intuitive take is that the market was down big yesterday and the whole world in Asia and Europe followed us into today. That's usually a recipe for a short term bounce back. Again we will see!

4 comments:

  1. Really hoping the end to the bad economy is near with increase job markets. Enjoy your blogs and think your on the money.

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  2. Glad you do! Thank you, appreicate your reading us!

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  3. Is it advisable to hire some payroll company for the small business firms from the privacy point of view?

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  4. Well I think the data provided is useful. I don't think that privacy is particularly compromised by hiring a payroll company more than it already is by so many other things in today's world in any case.

    To be honest more than an abstract concern about privacy my concern is companies for examle who use credit scores, parking tickets, etc as a criteria for hiring/not hiring.

    However, Payrolling your name suggests you have an opinion about this so what is it? I'd be interested to know.

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