Markets improved on pre-market futures today by the session’s close, and greeted the closing bell at our near intra-day highs. The small-cap Russell 2000 even surged within the final minutes of regular trading. The Dow inched up +63 points, +0.18%, while the Russell gained +0.59%. The S&P 500 performed even better — +0.80% on the day, while the Nasdaq, which started out hotter at the day’s open, closed +193 points, +1.37%.

Lululemon Athletica (LULU Quick QuoteLULU - Free Report) is out with Q3 earnings after today’s close, with beats on both top and bottom lines: earnings of $2.53 per share easily swept past the $2.27 in the Zacks consensus, while revenues of $2.2 billion squeaked by estimates for $2.19 billion. Gross margins continued to impress: +110 basis points (bps) to 57.0%; +220bps, +58.1% adjusted. It’s the 14th-straight earnings beat for LULU. However, earnings guidance for the full year, while higher, doesn’t make up the gains posted in Q3, and the stock is trading down -4% on the news.

Broadcom (AVGO Quick QuoteAVGO - Free Report) also beat estimates on top and bottom lines — which is no shocker: the company literally has no earnings misses as far back as our chart goes — earnings of $11.06 per share on revenues of $9.295 billion outpaced the $10.95 per share and $9.28 billion analysts were anticipating. Full-year revenue growth was boosted to $50.0 billion, likely as a result of synergies from its recent acquisition of VMWare. However, single-digit growth does not particularly become a stock up +66% year to date, so the shares are taking a -2% trim in late trading.

Tomorrow morning is the big Employment Situation report, expected to bring in 190K new jobs for November, and with a steady Unemployment Rate of 3.9%. As we’ve seen in other jobs data this week, however, it appears the extraordinary levels of job gains may now be a thing of the past. That said, the private-sector ADP (ADP Quick QuoteADP - Free Report) payroll report often does not match with the Friday nonfarm payrolls in real time; it takes a month or two of revisions to bring these closer together.

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