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A week before Thanksgiving, we have ourselves a full plate — of economic data this morning. Jobless Claims, Import and Export Prices, Philly Fed survey and more household-name retailers reporting Q3 earnings ahead of the opening bell. Following yesterday’s mostly flat trading day, we’re seeing more of the same at this hour: the Dow, Nasdaq and small-cap Russell 2000 are trending slightly lower, the S&P 500 slightly higher.
Initial Jobless Claims — which, incidentally, will come out Wednesday of next week due to the Turkey Day holiday Thursday — jumped to their highest levels of the past 12-week cycle to 231K from a slightly upwardly revised 218K the previous week. Cycle lows the second week of October looked as if we might be headed sub-200K again, but now we appear to be decisively north of that threshold. It was mid-August the last time we saw a higher new jobless claims number.
Continuing Claims rose for the eighth-straight week this morning, to 1.865 million from a slight downward revision of 1.833 million the previous week. This is the highest post of the year — in fact, it’s the highest figure we’ve seen since November 2021. Also consider that these longer-term jobless claims numbers are reported a week in arrears, meaning today’s higher initial claims figure may predict a still-higher continuing claims number next week.
Before moving onto other data, things in the labor market have gotten real: the job-loss environment many economists were forecasting as long as a year ago finally looks to have arrived. Even in previous weeks that saw higher initial claims, the longer-term tallies weren’t keeping up; we speculated at the time that those laid off, say, from a big firm like Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) and Meta (META - Free Report) were getting scooped up right away by other, often smaller, firms. Currently, it looks like those job openings have all been taken.
Import Prices for October fell twice as low as expectations: -0.8% from -0.4% projected, and down from the +l.3% originally reported a month ago. Ex-petrol, this figure warms a tad to -0.2%, so we see where the lion’s share of this drop in prices from outside the U.S. came from. Year over year, import prices are down -2% — as anti-inflation a number as we’re likely to see. Exports were also down — -1.1% month over month and -4.9% year over year, continuing a streak of nine straight months of lower export prices elsewhere. This speaks to lack of demand/economic struggles outside the U.S.
The Philly Fed survey for November was slightly better than expected: -5.9 versus -7.5 expected and the -9.0 reported for the previous month. This is the smallest negative number we’ve seen since August of 22, which was the last time production in the sixth-largest city in the country posted a positive number. It’s been 15 straight months of red ink.
Walmart (WMT - Free Report) only just met expectations on its bottom line this morning: Q3 earnings of $1.53 per share represents a +2% gain from the year-ago figure, while revenues of $160.8 billion narrowly outperformed the $159.5 billion in the Zacks consensus. While its Grocery and E-commerce businesses were higher for the quarter, full-year earnings guidance now shows the Zacks consensus toward the high end of the range. Shares are down -6% on the news, +10% year to date.
Macy’s (M - Free Report) , on the other hand, posted a strong beat over expectations: earnings of $0.21 per share were nicely ahead of the $0.00 anticipated, though still less than half the 52 cents per share we saw in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $4.86 billion surpassed the $4.77 billion in the Zacks consensus. Macy’s raised its full-year earnings guidance, while bringing up the projected floor on revenue estimates. Shares are +10% in the pre-market, climbing out of the -30% year-to-date hole the stock had been in.
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Weekly Jobless Claims Highest in 2 Years
A week before Thanksgiving, we have ourselves a full plate — of economic data this morning. Jobless Claims, Import and Export Prices, Philly Fed survey and more household-name retailers reporting Q3 earnings ahead of the opening bell. Following yesterday’s mostly flat trading day, we’re seeing more of the same at this hour: the Dow, Nasdaq and small-cap Russell 2000 are trending slightly lower, the S&P 500 slightly higher.
Initial Jobless Claims — which, incidentally, will come out Wednesday of next week due to the Turkey Day holiday Thursday — jumped to their highest levels of the past 12-week cycle to 231K from a slightly upwardly revised 218K the previous week. Cycle lows the second week of October looked as if we might be headed sub-200K again, but now we appear to be decisively north of that threshold. It was mid-August the last time we saw a higher new jobless claims number.
Continuing Claims rose for the eighth-straight week this morning, to 1.865 million from a slight downward revision of 1.833 million the previous week. This is the highest post of the year — in fact, it’s the highest figure we’ve seen since November 2021. Also consider that these longer-term jobless claims numbers are reported a week in arrears, meaning today’s higher initial claims figure may predict a still-higher continuing claims number next week.
Before moving onto other data, things in the labor market have gotten real: the job-loss environment many economists were forecasting as long as a year ago finally looks to have arrived. Even in previous weeks that saw higher initial claims, the longer-term tallies weren’t keeping up; we speculated at the time that those laid off, say, from a big firm like Microsoft (MSFT - Free Report) and Meta (META - Free Report) were getting scooped up right away by other, often smaller, firms. Currently, it looks like those job openings have all been taken.
Import Prices for October fell twice as low as expectations: -0.8% from -0.4% projected, and down from the +l.3% originally reported a month ago. Ex-petrol, this figure warms a tad to -0.2%, so we see where the lion’s share of this drop in prices from outside the U.S. came from. Year over year, import prices are down -2% — as anti-inflation a number as we’re likely to see. Exports were also down — -1.1% month over month and -4.9% year over year, continuing a streak of nine straight months of lower export prices elsewhere. This speaks to lack of demand/economic struggles outside the U.S.
The Philly Fed survey for November was slightly better than expected: -5.9 versus -7.5 expected and the -9.0 reported for the previous month. This is the smallest negative number we’ve seen since August of 22, which was the last time production in the sixth-largest city in the country posted a positive number. It’s been 15 straight months of red ink.
Walmart (WMT - Free Report) only just met expectations on its bottom line this morning: Q3 earnings of $1.53 per share represents a +2% gain from the year-ago figure, while revenues of $160.8 billion narrowly outperformed the $159.5 billion in the Zacks consensus. While its Grocery and E-commerce businesses were higher for the quarter, full-year earnings guidance now shows the Zacks consensus toward the high end of the range. Shares are down -6% on the news, +10% year to date.
Macy’s (M - Free Report) , on the other hand, posted a strong beat over expectations: earnings of $0.21 per share were nicely ahead of the $0.00 anticipated, though still less than half the 52 cents per share we saw in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $4.86 billion surpassed the $4.77 billion in the Zacks consensus. Macy’s raised its full-year earnings guidance, while bringing up the projected floor on revenue estimates. Shares are +10% in the pre-market, climbing out of the -30% year-to-date hole the stock had been in.