Thursday, June 9, 2016
You can practically set your watch by it: markets climb to near-historic levels, the next morning’s pre-market looks for a pullback. In today’s case, following the rally this week that has brought the S&P 500 close to the 2135 threshold, we are seeing a reticence to push through that mark in the pre-market, which is pulling back slightly.
Crude oil prices had been a big factor in leading markets higher over the past few days, but even these are taking a breather. And this is before mentioning the Wall Street Journal article early this morning that discussed billionaire investor George Soros’ bearish stance as he enters back into the markets.
Soros clearly sees trouble looming on the horizon — especially in the global economy, and particularly in China. “China continues to suffer from capital flight and has been depleting its foreign currency reserves while other Asian countries have been accumulating foreign currency” and “China is facing internal conflict within its political leadership,” he is reported to have said. As a result, Soros’ re-entry into an active investor position has seen him sell off stocks and buy lots of gold. It’s hard to appear more bearish than that.
For those unfamiliar, some of Soros’ biggest successes have been in anticipating downturns in the market, including a play against the British pound in 1993 that saw him net $1 billion. And after a long time away — focusing on philanthropic interests, progressive politics, et. al. — seeing the man come back into the fray by pulling back hard on the reins is hard to overlook.
This morning’s Weekly Jobless Claims came in close to inline with last week’s numbers: 264K new jobless claims was lower by 4,000 from last week’s (revised up by 1,000) 268K figure. The 4-week moving average of 269.5K has fallen by 7,500 jobs. Last Friday’s non-farm payroll report showed the unemployment rate having fallen to 4.7 percent as of May. Both of these figures look very good.
However, an anemic U.S. job growth average of 116K over the previous three months (including last Friday’s ghastly 38K total jobs added in May) suggests that while layoffs are not rampant, new job hires is close to non-existent. Either that, or perhaps we are seeing the larger illustration of the “gig economy” playing out: unemployment is down, but the jobs that are out there tend to be piecemeal.
Mark Vickery
Senior Editor
Image: Bigstock
Oil Dips, George Soros Takes Bearish Stance
Thursday, June 9, 2016
You can practically set your watch by it: markets climb to near-historic levels, the next morning’s pre-market looks for a pullback. In today’s case, following the rally this week that has brought the S&P 500 close to the 2135 threshold, we are seeing a reticence to push through that mark in the pre-market, which is pulling back slightly.
Crude oil prices had been a big factor in leading markets higher over the past few days, but even these are taking a breather. And this is before mentioning the Wall Street Journal article early this morning that discussed billionaire investor George Soros’ bearish stance as he enters back into the markets.
Soros clearly sees trouble looming on the horizon — especially in the global economy, and particularly in China. “China continues to suffer from capital flight and has been depleting its foreign currency reserves while other Asian countries have been accumulating foreign currency” and “China is facing internal conflict within its political leadership,” he is reported to have said. As a result, Soros’ re-entry into an active investor position has seen him sell off stocks and buy lots of gold. It’s hard to appear more bearish than that.
For those unfamiliar, some of Soros’ biggest successes have been in anticipating downturns in the market, including a play against the British pound in 1993 that saw him net $1 billion. And after a long time away — focusing on philanthropic interests, progressive politics, et. al. — seeing the man come back into the fray by pulling back hard on the reins is hard to overlook.
This morning’s Weekly Jobless Claims came in close to inline with last week’s numbers: 264K new jobless claims was lower by 4,000 from last week’s (revised up by 1,000) 268K figure. The 4-week moving average of 269.5K has fallen by 7,500 jobs. Last Friday’s non-farm payroll report showed the unemployment rate having fallen to 4.7 percent as of May. Both of these figures look very good.
However, an anemic U.S. job growth average of 116K over the previous three months (including last Friday’s ghastly 38K total jobs added in May) suggests that while layoffs are not rampant, new job hires is close to non-existent. Either that, or perhaps we are seeing the larger illustration of the “gig economy” playing out: unemployment is down, but the jobs that are out there tend to be piecemeal.
Mark Vickery
Senior Editor