Jobless Claims Below 400,000

Weekly jobless claims have fallen below the 400,000 mark to 383,000 for the week ended February 5th -- a dip of 36,000 and a big surprise from the 413,000 expected. It is also the lowest level since July 2008. The four-week moving average is down 15,000 to 431,500, and this figure averages in the exceptional volatility we've seen with these numbers lately.

This further pushes the narrative that we have broken out of the "trading range" around 450,000 jobless claims we had been in throughout all of 2010. Many analysts -- including Zacks Chief Market Strategist Dirk van Dijk, CFA -- had been looking at the 400,000 number as a watershed level, at which point a meaningful amount of Americans are again finding work and helping the economy recover in earnest.

That said, the pre-markets did not jump on the news, and futures had been down previous to this new jobless report. Part of the reason may that the market has priced in some of this good news following last week's unemployment rate falling to 9.0%, and also that there is real downward pressure on the markets following 8 straight up days on the Dow.

Today also marks the official start to Verizon Wireless offering the iPhone 4 -- something the market began to price into Verizon (and Apple) stock a month ago. This doesn't make it a meaningless event, but if you're looking for an impact on the market this morning, you may have already missed the boat.

In earnings news, Pepsico beats EPS estimates by a penny but fell 5% year over year. Sprint Nextel posted earnings of 31 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2 cents.  However, Sprint brought in 34 cents per share a year ago. After the bell today, Kraft reports earnings.

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