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Normally Initial Jobless Claims come out on the Thursday morning of each week, but Thanksgiving being the one reliable Thursday public holiday, this week it always moves to Wednesday. New claims for last week dropped to 209K — 20K fewer than analysts were looking for, and even farther away from the previous week’s upwardly revised 233K, which was the highest single-week new jobless claims tally since August. The 209K posted this morning is the lowest since mid-October.
We had been seeing these weekly jobless claims figures rising rapidly over the past several weeks, which is even more pronounced in the Continuing Claims figure out today: 1.840 million breaks the 8-week streak of higher long-term jobless claims, and is well off the slightly downwardly revised 1.862 million the previous week. As these continuing claims figures are reported a week in arrears from new claims, we may see another down week a week from tomorrow.
Preliminary Durable Goods Orders for October are out this morning, as well: -5.4% is the lowest tally since July, and 200 basis points (bps) below the -3.4% expected. This also more than reverses the downwardly revised +4.0% reported for the month earlier, which itself was only the fifth month in five with a positive durable goods number. Strip out transportation orders and we rally back to 0.0% last month; the previous month was downwardly revised 30 bps to +0.2%. Non-defense, ex-aircraft — a proxy for “normal” business investment — reached -0.1%; +0.1% had been expected.
After today’s open, we’ll see a Consumer Sentiment report for November, which is expected to tick up to 60.6 from 60.4 last month. But in actuality, we can all likely find out at our Thanksgiving dinner tables tomorrow that prices for food items have actually come down since, say, six months ago, and “more bang for the buck” has a way of improving consumer sentiment. This again marks a victory for the Fed in the battle against inflation, although the monetary policy body is wisely resisting sticking the flag in prematurely.
This goes for gasoline prices, as well, which are down quite a bit over the past year and a half or so. WTI oil prices have tumbled below $75 per barrel this morning, putting yet more downward pressure on fuel prices. Perhaps this will be a boon for holiday shopping season — which unofficially starts this “Black” Friday, of course — though we won’t be counting any turkeys before they hatch. Pre-market futures are solid at this hour, however, with the Dow +60 points, the S&P 500 +15 and the Nasdaq +85 points.
Finally, farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Co. (DE - Free Report) reported fiscal Q4 numbers head of today’s opening bell, with earnings of $8.26 per share easily surpassing the $7.49 in the Zacks consensus (and the $7.44 per share reported in the year-ago quarter) for a +10.25% earnings surprise. Revenues of $13.8 billion topped estimates by +1.27%, and were below the $14.35 billion posted a year ago. Guidance was light, however, and this has sent shares down another -5% in early trading; the stock was already down -10.8% year to date.
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Jobless Claims Come in Much Lower Than Expected
Normally Initial Jobless Claims come out on the Thursday morning of each week, but Thanksgiving being the one reliable Thursday public holiday, this week it always moves to Wednesday. New claims for last week dropped to 209K — 20K fewer than analysts were looking for, and even farther away from the previous week’s upwardly revised 233K, which was the highest single-week new jobless claims tally since August. The 209K posted this morning is the lowest since mid-October.
We had been seeing these weekly jobless claims figures rising rapidly over the past several weeks, which is even more pronounced in the Continuing Claims figure out today: 1.840 million breaks the 8-week streak of higher long-term jobless claims, and is well off the slightly downwardly revised 1.862 million the previous week. As these continuing claims figures are reported a week in arrears from new claims, we may see another down week a week from tomorrow.
Preliminary Durable Goods Orders for October are out this morning, as well: -5.4% is the lowest tally since July, and 200 basis points (bps) below the -3.4% expected. This also more than reverses the downwardly revised +4.0% reported for the month earlier, which itself was only the fifth month in five with a positive durable goods number. Strip out transportation orders and we rally back to 0.0% last month; the previous month was downwardly revised 30 bps to +0.2%. Non-defense, ex-aircraft — a proxy for “normal” business investment — reached -0.1%; +0.1% had been expected.
After today’s open, we’ll see a Consumer Sentiment report for November, which is expected to tick up to 60.6 from 60.4 last month. But in actuality, we can all likely find out at our Thanksgiving dinner tables tomorrow that prices for food items have actually come down since, say, six months ago, and “more bang for the buck” has a way of improving consumer sentiment. This again marks a victory for the Fed in the battle against inflation, although the monetary policy body is wisely resisting sticking the flag in prematurely.
This goes for gasoline prices, as well, which are down quite a bit over the past year and a half or so. WTI oil prices have tumbled below $75 per barrel this morning, putting yet more downward pressure on fuel prices. Perhaps this will be a boon for holiday shopping season — which unofficially starts this “Black” Friday, of course — though we won’t be counting any turkeys before they hatch. Pre-market futures are solid at this hour, however, with the Dow +60 points, the S&P 500 +15 and the Nasdaq +85 points.
Finally, farm equipment manufacturer Deere & Co. (DE - Free Report) reported fiscal Q4 numbers head of today’s opening bell, with earnings of $8.26 per share easily surpassing the $7.49 in the Zacks consensus (and the $7.44 per share reported in the year-ago quarter) for a +10.25% earnings surprise. Revenues of $13.8 billion topped estimates by +1.27%, and were below the $14.35 billion posted a year ago. Guidance was light, however, and this has sent shares down another -5% in early trading; the stock was already down -10.8% year to date.