Courtesy of Blain.
After a volatile morning in reaction to the employment data, the market went dead around 11 AM and didn’t do much of anything after. The S&P 500 fell 0.14% and the NASDAQ 0.18%. This despite very good employment data – but again in this perverse environment of “too much good news is bad news” some people didn’t like the data being so strong as it means the Fed was more likely to finally act to raise rates. Greece also weighed on the market.
Employers added 280,000 jobs in May, the most in five months, further dispelling fears that a first-quarter slowdown would take hold, figures from the Labor Department showed Friday. That followed a revised 221,000 April advance. Hourly earnings climbed from a year ago by the most since August 2013, while an increase in the number of people entering the labor force caused the unemployment rate to creep up to 5.5 percent from 5.4 percent. May job growth was driven by a 256,000 jump in the private service sector. Retailers, temporary-help agencies, restaurants, hotels and health-care providers also boosted headcounts in May.
Indexes remain “stuck”.
Bond yields have been far more interesting with yet another spike as traders try to front run a Fed hike later in 2015.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) closed up 1.6 percent for a new record and Goldman Sachs (GS) closed at a 52-week high. Financials would benefit from higher rates.
We mentioned the regional bank ETF (KRE) earlier this week.
Meanwhile, utilities often suffer in the face of rising interest rates as bonds provide competition for these stocks with dividend yields.
Chinese stocks continue their outperformance of the past few months; today we saw a secondary move in Chinese stocks that had been lagging their peers.
Have a great summer weekend and we’ll see if this market can wake up next week.
