December Jobs Report In Line With Expectations
All week everybody’s been anticipating this morning’s Jobs Report. After ADP’s report on Wednesday, many were worried that it would be worse than expectations and truly dire. Instead, the 524,000 jobs lost in December are right in line with expectations.
As a result, the market is holding up pretty well: Dow is down about 100, S&P about 15. Last month, stocks sold off into a bad jobs report but reversed powerfully intraday to finish with a strong rally. That was a significant indicator that markets had priced in a lot of news and supportive of the idea that we could rally – which turned out to be right.
Again, this is pretty positive: if we can hold up the way we are on the announcement of 500k+ lost jobs, it continues to imply that the market has already priced in a severe recession.