Image Source: Pixabay

Major market indices closed at session highs today (all but the Russell 2000, that is). In fact, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq found themselves ringing the end of the trading day at new all-time closing highs: 5509 and 18,028, respectively. The Nasdaq led the way, +0.84%, followed by the S&P’s +0.62% — helped by Tesla’s (TSLA - Free Report) strongest session in some time, +10%. The Dow gained +162 points, +0.41%, while the small-cap Russell rose +0.19%.

Q2 auto sales proved to be a pretty good quarter, all things considered. Not only Tesla’s healthy 444K vehicles sold, which was higher than expected, but Toyota (TM - Free Report) sold over 621K and General Motors (GM - Free Report) more than 700K. Toyota, in particular, saw +9.2% sales growth for the quarter, citing greater demand for SUVs. Now that automakers are starting to right-size their EV output with hybrid and internal-combustion engines, we’re seeing companies yield good results.

JOLTS data for May was also higher than expected. A headline on the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) of 8.1 million outpaced the 7.9 million anticipated, and the previous month was revised downward to 7.9 million from 8.1 million initially reported — basically, these two monthly figures simply reversed. Hires reached 5.8 million for the month, while Separations came in at 5.4 million. Of those separations, 3.5 million were counted as Job Quits.

The biggest jobs-losing segment for the month was in Accommodation/Food Services, at -147K. Neither the Hires Rate nor the Separations Rate changed month over month, remaining at +3.6% and +3.4%, respectively. This also marks six months in the past eight of downward-moving JOLTS headline numbers. The last time we were below 7.9 million was back in February of 2021, and this metric struck an all-time high of 12.2 million back in March 2022 — the same month the Fed began raising interest rates.

Tomorrow brings us more key employment data. Private-sector payrolls from Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Free Report) is expected to drift up to +160K new private-sector jobs filled in June, up from +152K in May. We’ll also see an early report on Weekly Jobless Claims, as the normal Thursday release date will be closed for the Independence Day holiday. New jobless claims are expected to remain in-line with the previous week at around 233K, while Continuing Claims rose to a 52-week-high 1.84 million last week.

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