Hoeveel jobs erbij?

Veel gebeurde er niet, wat peptalk over de economie door een FED-bestu­ur­der zette de markt even in beweg­ing maar die werd snel geneu­traliseerd. De stem­ming bli­jft nerveus, wel lijkt de sterke ral­ly nu even op adem te komen. Van­daag om 14:30 komen er belan­grijke cijfers; hoeveel jobs zijn erbij gekomen? Of niet?

15:25 ET Bond Mar­ket Sum­ma­ry : Today’s eco­nom­ic data had start­ed the trea­suries down move, and the mar­ket pro­ceed­ed to take out some key tech­ni­cal lev­els ahead of Fed Gov­er­nor Bernanke’s ​‘go-team!’ eco­nom­ic pep talk, wip­ing out small­er play­ers along the way. In regard to job cre­ation, the Fed-ster said that he was ​“pret­ty sure we’ll see some big num­bers fair­ly soon,” adding he was ​“not exact­ly sure when we’ll see large-scale job cre­ation. It’s like­ly we’ll see it not too far from now.” Sounds like a big hint. Ner­vous traders are cov­er­ing healthy posi­tions for fear that even a far out­ly­ing employ­ment num­ber, which under oth­er cir­cum­stances would spank the mar­ket hard, has been dis­count­ed to some extent. Hence, there is lit­tle incen­tive to car­ry a posi­tion into the num­ber when talk has pumped the high expec­ta­tions over 300K on non-farm vs the 150 – 175K guessti­mates. Of course, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of revi­sions and/​or a dis­ap­point­ment on the scale seen last time leaves many con­sid­er­ing this release a prover­bial crap shoot. The upcom­ing sup­ply to be dealt with is also weigh­ing on prices. The ten-year tapped a 4.192% yield near the ses­sion close and is cur­rent­ly ‑12/​32nds yield­ing 4.159%. Twos are ‑04/​32nds yield­ing 1.819%; threes are ‑06/​32nds yield­ing 2.250%; fives are ‑09/​32nds yield­ing 3.174%; thir­ties are ‑11/​32nds yield­ing 4.978%.

13:36 ET Intra­day Floor Talk : Anoth­er rumor cre­at­ing a buzz on desks is MRK for SGP. Since this rumor came to our atten­tion, we are hear­ing Lehman has made com­ments sug­gest­ing that there is no valid­i­ty to the nature of such a rumor. In addi­tion, fur­ther checks sug­gest this rumor has reared its head before giv­en the for­mal rela­tion­ship between the two com­pa­nies to joint­ly devel­op and mar­ket pre­scrip­tion med­i­cines in the cho­les­terol-man­age­ment and res­pi­ra­to­ry ther­a­peu­tic areas since 2000.

12:27 ET Bush admin­is­tra­tion warns Chi­na on semi­con­duc­tor tax rebates — Reuters : Reuters reports that the Unit­ed States is pre­pared to take legal action against Chi­na over a semi­con­duc­tor tax rebate pro­gram that dis­crim­i­nates against for­eign sup­pli­ers if the issue can­not be resolved by this spring through bilat­er­al nego­ti­a­tions, cit­ing a U.S. offi­cial. ​“I think we’re going to give it one last shot bilat­er­al­ly before going to dis­pute set­tle­ment” at the World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion.

12:06 ET Intra­day Floor Talk : We are hear­ing mul­ti­ple ver­sions of chat­ter relat­ed to ANF (+7.8%) poten­tial­ly mak­ing a bid for PSUN (+4.4%), with one sug­gest­ing PSUN would receive a bid in the mid-$30s. How­ev­er, fur­ther checks sug­gest pes­simism on the nature of this rumor with spec­u­la­tion of its emer­gence being tied to a major hedge fund that may be try­ing to talk down ANF, fol­low­ing its very strong Jan comps report, by float­ing a rumor of a rich takeover.

11:42 ET Short-Squeeze Alert — Whole Foods spikes to new 52-wk high, aid­ed by short-cov­er­ing (WFMI) 71.97 +3.05:

11:04 ET Intel approach­es Dec lows (INTC) 29.90 ‑0.11: – Tech­ni­cal – Loss­es are minor thus far but the issue is of inter­est as it has slipped back toward sup­port at its Dec lows (29.71÷29.66) in recent action (ses­sion low 29.81).

10:00 ET Mar­ket Movers : CIA Direc­tor George Tenet is speak­ing on con­cerns of intel­li­gence fail­ures regard­ing Iraq. The talk will like­ly be care­ful and script­ed, how­ev­er there is the poten­tial for mar­ket mov­ing head­lines (or ​“tape-bombs”).

09:50 ET Floor Talk — Mar­ket moves to lows of morn­ing : Hear­ing from the floor that ear­ly lift in the mar­ket aid­ed by S&P futures buy­ing at Mor­gan Stan­ley and JP Mor­gan, but traders not see­ing any real fol­low through com­ing behind these orders.