Ahead of Wall Street - October 4, 2012

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Today’s trading action will likely be not much different from what we have been seeing in the last few sessions, with investors waiting for Friday’s September non-farm payroll report and the start of the third quarter earnings season next week. On the news front this morning, we got a positive looking weekly Jobless Claims report on the home front, while there were no surprises in the European Central Bank’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged.

The key variable on the European front now is for the Spanish government to swallow its pride and ask for a bailout. Everybody in the market knows that it’s only a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ the Spaniards will be making the call, but the delay is nevertheless unhelpful, to say the least.

The key labor market report that everyone is waiting for is the Friday jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with consensus expectation of 118K job gains in September. This morning’s Jobless Claims data was also moderately on the positive side, though the survey week for the claims report does not correspond with the survey week for Friday’s BLS report. Initial claims increased by 4K last week o 367K. However, given the upward revision to the prior week’s tally by 4K, the actual increase was 8K. The 4-week average, which
smoothes out the week to week volatility in this series, remain unchanged at 375K.

Wednesday’s labor market reading from payroll processor Automatic Data Processing (ADP - Snapshot Report) seems to show that we should get a positive surprise from the BLS. But given the ADP’s less than stellar record lately, we haven’t seen in much in terms of upward adjustments to
consensus expectations.

Sheraz Mian
Director of Research