US Employment Trends: Still Dancing with the Bear

12/04/08 02:56PM EST
When I shorted SPY’s at 11am this morning, my inbox caught a bid. For whatever reason, people don’t like it as much when I am on the bearish side of the “Trade” versus the bullish side. I’m cool with it though. This is a full contact sport.

Anyway, one of the main counterpunches I am getting today is that “Keith, look at the math, jobless claims were better.” While this is true in isolation (on a one week basis), this math doesn’t confirm anything other than the negative “Trend” in the US employment picture. Weekly jobless claims were down week over week to 509,000, but that’s because last week was a nosebleed peak (look at the chart). The way my math works is using the 4 week moving average. On that score, jobless claims we’re UP by another 6,000 jobs testing new cycle highs at 525,000.

Math and narratives dance to whatever tune the assigns them. My process is what it is. If you want to get long this market ahead of tomorrow’s monthly employment report, have fun with that. I’m short that idea at SP500 874.
KM
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