Money Watch: Weekly Wrap
One week down, 51 more to go.
Investors returned from the holiday break focused on jobs. Although early-week employment indicators were positive, the Labor Department's December jobs report was mostly bad. Headlines from the report include:
- Jobs created = 103K
- Unemployment rate = 9.4% (down from 9.8%, two-thirds of which was due to 260K leaving the work force)
- Total unemployed = 14.5 million
- Long-term unemployed (more than 27 weeks) = 6.4 million
- DJIA: 11,674, up 0.8% on week, up 0.8% YTD
- S&P 500: 1271, up 1.1% on week, up 1.1% YTD
- NASDAQ: 2703, up 1.9% on week, up 1.9% YTD
- February Crude Oil: $88.03, down 3.6% on week
- February Gold: $1368.90, down 3.7% on week
FACTOIDS OF THE WEEK:
- Fed Chief Ben Bernanke said "it could take four to five more years for the job market to normalize fully".
- At December's pace, it would take 70 months-or until late 2016-to make up for the 8.4M jobs lost during the recession
- 1.8M jobs have been lost since 2001
IN THE WEEK AHEAD: Earnings season will kick off, with Alcoa, Intel and JP Morgan Chase reporting. On the economic calendar, there will be readings on inflation at both the producer and consumer levels; reports on the budget and trade deficits; as well as data on retail sales.
Mon 1/10:
Tues 1/11:
Weds 1/12:
7:00 MBA mortgage purchase applications index
8:30 Import and Export Prices
2:00 Beige Book
2:00 Treasury Budget
Thurs 1/13:
8:30 Weekly Claims
8:30 PPI
8:30 International Trade
Fri 1/14:
8:30 CPI
8:30 Retail Sales
9:15 Industrial Production
9:55 Consumer Sentiment
10:00 Business Inventories
