{"id":5587,"date":"2012-05-04T07:38:58","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T12:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5587"},"modified":"2012-05-04T07:38:58","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T12:38:58","slug":"before-the-open-may-4-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/?p=5587","title":{"rendered":"Before the Open (May 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Good morning. Happy Friday. Happy Employment Numbers Day.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mixed; there were no 1% movers. Europe is currently mostly down. Belgium and Stockholm are down more than 1%. Futures here in the States (before the employment numbers were released) were flat.<!--more--><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The dollar is up slightly. Oil is down almost 2%; copper is flat. Gold and silver are down. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">On Tuesday the bulls were feeling pretty good. The Dow was hitting a new high, and the other indexes weren&#8217;t far behind. The breadth indicators had improved, and several key groups and key stocks had recovered from recent losses. Overall the indexes were in a trading range, but given prices were much closer to the top of their ranges that the bottom, the bulls were breathing a little easier. Not any more. Prices have been falling for three days, and less-than-expected jobs report numbers could put the hammer down.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">Here are the numbers\u2026<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">unemployment rate: dropped to 8.1% (from 8.2%)<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">nonfarm payrolls: up 115K<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">private payrolls: up 130K<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">average workweek: 34.50 hours<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">hourly earnings: $23.38<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The market&#8217;s initial reaction was to move down slightly, but a couple minutes after the release, there were no fireworks. <\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">The bulls have their work cut out for them. Another day of selling would not be good. It wouldn&#8217;t be the end of the world, but it wouldn&#8217;t be indicative of strength. Bottom line is the market is in a funk. Rallies get sold, dips get bought. Over the last couple months the indexes have been range bound, and until they breakout of their funk, be defensive. More after the open.<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">headlines at <a href=\"http:\/\/biz.yahoo.com\/apf\/archive.html\">Yahoo Finance<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">headlines at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/newsviewer\">MarketWatch<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">today&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.briefing.com\/investor\/calendars\/upgrades-downgrades\/\">upgrades\/downgrades<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5571\">Earnings<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: medium;\">this week&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/leavittbrothers.com\/blog\/?p=5574\">Economic Numbers<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\nvar gaJsHost = ((\"https:\" == document.location.protocol) ? \"https:\/\/ssl.\" : \"http:\/\/www.\");\ndocument.write(unescape(\"%3Cscript src='\" + gaJsHost + \"google-analytics.com\/ga.js' type='text\/javascript'%3E%3C\/script%3E\"));\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><br \/>\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\/\/ <![CDATA[\nvar pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(\"UA-6273151-1\");\npageTracker._initData();\npageTracker._trackPageview();\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good morning. Happy Friday. Happy Employment Numbers Day. The Asian\/Pacific markets closed mixed; there were no 1% movers. Europe is currently mostly down. Belgium and Stockholm are down more than 1%. Futures here in the States (before the employment numbers were released) were flat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.leavittbrothers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}