Morning Market Report

There's breaking economic data. The weekly jobs report just came out. New claims were at 570,000. The week prior it was at 574,000. The consensus was 560,00 and so this is slightly worse. That number has been bouncing in that range for the better part of two months. This is all a prelude to the monthly BLS jobs report. The consensus on that number continues to be a loss of 228,000 jobs.

Yesterday was the fourth straight day of losses in the three major indices. Tuesday was a bloody day with indices losing in excess of 2%. Yesterday was much more mild. Losses ranged in the neighborhood of one half of one percent. Futures had been trending up prior to the release of the jobs report and that continues. Futures are up about one half of one percent in the three indices.

Costco came out with their August sales figures and investors appear to be fixated on their lower than expected 2% drop in same store sales. Also, the Institute of Supply Managment will come out with its non manufacturing index. It's expected to fall below 50 which means that portion of the economy is still contracting.

Bonds are giving some back after having a monster day yesterday. The ten year U.S. Treasury Bond is up about 3 basis points but it's still trading at 3.34%. Remarkably, the Ten year has actually lost about 40 basis points since the announcement by Fed Chairman Bernanke that he would cease buying bonds in October. Its current level is the lowest in about two months. Meanwhile, oil is trending up. It's now at $68.52 per barrel after reaching as low as $66 a barrel earlier in the week.

Markets around the world were generally up. They were mixed in the Far East and up across the board in Europe. The Hang Seng in China was up 1.23%, the NIKKEI in Japan was down .64%, while the Straits Time Index in Singapore was up 1.11%. In Europe, the FTSE was up .14%, the DAX in Germany was up .32%, and the Spanish Index was up .76%.

In currencies, the Dollar was down .22% against the Euro, it was down .67% against the British pound, while it's up .22% against the Japanese Yen.