Initial Claims
The headline initial claims number fell 19k WoW to 391k (22k after a 3k upward revision to last week’s data). Rolling claims fell 16.5k to 402k, the lowest print since 2008. On a non-seasonally-adjusted basis, reported claims fell 38k WoW. NSA claims in 2011 to date have been less volatile than typical.
We have been looking for claims in the 375-400k range as the level that can begin to bring unemployment down. If this level is held, we expect to see unemployment improve. That said, it is worth highlighting an important caveat. This recession has been different in that it has pushed the labor force participation rate down by ~200 bps, which has had a correspondingly positive improvement on the unemployment rate. In other words, the unemployment rate isn't really 9%, it's 11%. So when we say that claims of 375-400k will start to bring down the unemployment rate, we are actually referring to the 11% actual rate as opposed to the 9% reported rate.
One of our astute clients pointed out the relationship between the S&P and initial claims shown below. We show the two series in the following chart, with initial claims inverted on the left axis.
Yield Curve Continues to Widen
We chart the 2-10 spread as a proxy for NIM. Thus far the spread in 1Q is tracking 42 bps wider than 4Q. The current level of 274 bps is slightly tighter than last week (278 bps).
Financial Subsector Performance
The table below shows the stock performance of each Financial subsector over four durations.
Joshua Steiner, CFA
Allison Kaptur
