Jobless Claims Lifting

For much of the last several years, whenever there has been any doubt regarding the strength of the recovery, jobless claims were always there to act as a security blanket. This morning’s report, though, has frayed the yarn slightly. While economists were expecting first time claims to come in at 220K, the actual reading was 234K, which was the highest level in six months! To be sure, 234K is still low by historical standards, but it’s not the type of sub 225K reading that we’ve been used to seeing lately.  

Yesterday’s 2%+ gain in the major US averages was a welcome relief for bulls and helped to push the S&P 500 into positive territory for the month. Since the lows of the Financial Crisis in March 2009, yesterday’s gain was the 66th time that the S&P 500 has gained more than 2% in a single day. Of those prior occurrences, the index’s average performance the following day was a decline of 0.1% with positive returns just under half of the time.