Stat of the Day: Yep, More Jobs Than Workers

In this week's message (posted yesterday) we suggested that last Friday's weaker than anticipated jobs number may have had more to do with a lack of workers than it did a lack of jobs:

This Week's Message: Four Hikes Are In The Cards, But That's Totally Okay

Friday’s jobs number missed the consensus estimate by 29k, and wage growth was a bit softer than expected. The unemployment rate fell to 3.9%, although that can be explained away (and is by naysayers galore!) by a drop in the labor force participation rate (LFP).

Coming Treasury Auctions Will Be Telling

We've made the case from the get-go that a serious risk (one of many) of inciting trade disputes is the potential to notably hurt the demand for U.S. treasury debt -- at a time (tax cuts and spending increases) when it's needed most.

Quotes of the Day

The Non-Manufacturing (services) Institute for Supply Management survey for April was just released. Like the manufacturing report it was on balance a positive read on the present state of the economy.

Here we'll do what we did yesterday with the April manufacturing survey and highlight the comment section as follows:

What It Is

I keep hearing that the reason the market isn’t rallying hard during this amazing earnings season is that “it was all priced in”. Nothing new here. Everybody knew earnings were going to be great, so now what?” Nah… I don’t buy it… If it were all priced in so many companies’ stocks wouldn’t be screaming higher as earnings are announced, only to give it all back the next day…

Quotes of the Day

We view the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM)'s monthly purchasing managers surveys as critical inputs to our macro index.
We've added highlights as follows to the April manufacturing report's featured respondents' comments below:

Quote of the Day: Nobody Getting Killed Here, Quite the Opposite In Fact!!

It's critically important that you and I understand the benefits of trade (which are vast in number)!