Before the Open (Sep 4)

Good morning. Happy Friday.
The jobs report is out – I’ll get to the numbers in a minute.
The Asian/Pacific markets closed up. Hong Kong led the way with a 2.8% gain.
Europe is up across the board. Several indexes gained more than 1%; none gained more than 2%. …
Futures here in the States were up several points heading into the unemployment numbers. The initial reaction was negative, then positive.
After the opening gap and first hour of trading (probably less), trading will be very slow today. Volume has fallen off the last couple days, and with a 3-day weekend ahead of us (the market is closed Monday), traders are not likely to stick around.
The charts are a little messy right now. The Intermediate term trend remains up (higher highs and higher lows remain in place) while the short term trend is iffy (the market is unchanged over the last 30 days). Don’t over analyze.
Here are those employment numbers…
unemployment rate – 9.7% (vs. 9.4% July)
nonfarm payrolls down 216K
average hourly earnings up 0.3% (vs. 0.3% July)
workweek 33.1 hours (unchanged)
Have a great weekend. Some time mid-to-late next week the market should decide whether it wants to surge higher or correct. Be ready.
headlines at Yahoo Finance
stocks to watch from MarketWatch
today’s upgrades/downgrades
yesterday’s Sector Performance
this week’s Earnings Reports
this week’s Economic Numbers
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