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The market is not taking advantage of the opportunity to go down
however, some techs have begun to lose their momentum. this feels so much like last december. e.g. kopn (short recently from 5.5), extr (short on breaking down out of symmetric triangle).
well, consider it payback :) i owe you for the heads up on some stocks (e.g. klic, brks, cof, mbi, cree ...) all of which i have short positions in from last week or earlier ... but then, i'm a kind of short and hold guy ...
unemployment numbers .... aha!
WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. government said on
Monday it made an error in a key monthly jobs report that
affected the payroll trends during September and October and
will being re-issuing its most recent data.
The Labor Department released its November employment
report on Friday showing payrolls fell by 40,000 last month,
after a 6,000 gain in October. The report had said September
payrolls fell by 4,000.
The department also had said the unemployment rate shot up
to 6 percent in November from 5.7 percent in October.
The unemployment data will not be affected by any of the
changes because it is based on a survey of households and is
separate from the survey of business establishments that is
used to compute the payroll numbers.
John Castle, economist with Labor Department's Bureau of
Labor Statistics, said the most recent employment report would
be replaced by another report to fix the problem.
The newly revised report will be issued over the Internet
on the bureau's Web site (http://www.bls.gov/ces).
The month-to-month changes for payrolls in September and
October were likely to be affected but it was not clear how
they would be changed.
Castle would not say whether either figure would be revised
up or down.
He said there would be further changes to the report that
have to do with the communications industry's hours worked and
hourly earnings series.
He would not say whether there would be amendments to the
overall November numbers for the average workweek or average
hourly earnings, which are also closely watched by markets.
On Friday, Labor said November's average workweek stayed
steady at 34.2 hours and average hourly earnings rose 0.3
percent to $14.93.
"This release incorporates additional corrections for
nonsupervisory workers estimates in the communications industry
for October and November 2002," Castle said, reading from a
statement that Labor planned to release on the Web. "These
corrections resulted in minor revisions in some hours and
earnings series for these two months."
The payroll error was apparently brought to the attention
of the government by Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, a
firm that analyzes data and issues commentary read by many
traders on Wall Street.
Economist Ray Stone of the Princeton, N.J.-based firm said
he noticed something was amiss when the October and September
payroll numbers seemed to be at odds with his forecasts. He
said the mistake had to do with how the department smoothed out
the series to adjust for seasonal fluctuations in hiring.
He alerted the BLS late on Friday and he said they worked
through the weekend to pore over the figures and find out if
there was indeed an error.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has had a handful of other
snafus in recent years, one of which involved an error
discovered in the Consumer Price Index and two of which
concerned the accidental posting of some data ahead of the
scheduled release time.
In September 2000, the bureau was forced to make a slight
revision to the CPI because of an error stemming from the way
the bureau measures air conditioning in housing units.
It accidentally posted some components of the jobs report a
day ahead of schedule in November 1998, causing a stir in
financial markets. In January 1999 it put market-sensitive
information on producer prices ahead of schedule onto its Web
site.
so the only thing left is either more stock OR commodities or stuff like diamonds, platinum gold art work or food. ...
well the "stock" part would make sense if there had been the capitulation everyone was looking for. however, right now, there are plenty of folks who are still holding on from the last bull and -- at least during the current rally -- have been selling into strength.
(OT) To LG
Similar to what another poster just mentioned, I just wanted to voice my thanks to LG, whom I've been following and learning from since I first found the MDD board on SI in Winter 2000. Back then, you literally saved me a good chunk of money that I made on my naive boolishness, at a time when I didn't even understand the risks. Since then, you've been a great teacher. And your charts are without equal.
!!!! not so subtle in that sense.
subtle form of scapegoating, perhaps.
The jobs report doesn't track with the numbers that came out every week either.
no? they do if you ignore "seasonal adjustment". which you should be doing ...
laff. oh :)
I would think after some 110 points drop, there has GOT to be some kind of a short covering rally into the close.[\i]
yeah, like all those profit taking swoons we had over the last 8 weeks ....
its amazing how much you have to dig to find the actual numbers. i didn't even see the word "seasonal adjustment" in the WSJ report, and had to follow a link to numbers presumably unmassaged by the ministry of labor statistics:
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED DATA
In the week ending Nov. 23, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 364,000, a decrease of 17,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 381,000. The 4-week moving average was 385,750, a decrease of 11,250 from the previous week's revised average of 397,000.
[...]
UNADJUSTED DATA
The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 431,641 in the week ending Nov. 23, an increase of 58,985 from the previous week. There were 438,820 initial claims in the comparable week in 2001.
[...]
http://online.wsj.com/documents/bbjobs.htm
i don't quite understand why a "seasonal" winter adjustment (presumably to smooth out the numbers to better approximate 1/52 of a yearly rate?) should be so huge in winter ... isn't there more hiring going into xmas?
There was concerted effort to tone down tech stocks today.
hmm. well i just caught a snippet of a tech fund manager on cnbc who's up (as memory serves) some 70% in 9 weeks but is now 20-30% cash. he's boolish, of course, but his cash position says more than his words.
ah kopn! they've been holding it up over $5 pretty well, very thinly traded though.
i'd advise caution. i've been continuously shorting kopn from $18+ since this time last year, and still now. that's my little ATM. direction will be down, when fundamentals come into play ...
well one of your favorites (klic) and mine (pmcs) seem to do pretty well predicting directional moves in the "flight to crap" segment of the rally.
oh. okie dokie.
nevertheless, trimtabs has shown net outflows for almost all of this rally, although diminishing and with a net inflow at the end of november. nevertheless, if 401k holders are participating, they aren't doing it via mutual funds ...
well the most convincing explanation that i've seen for the recent rally, that's maybe the least "paranoid" is doug noland's:
http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=602901
ecri wli again ....
well i had to check this to make sure i remembered correctly. this is just from a random search on google, so the particular month and data aren't important, just the wli components:
LEADING INDICATORS. Six of the ten indicators that make up the leading index increased in May. The positive contributors to the leading index in May - from largest to smallest - were interest rate spread, stock prices, index of consumer expectations, money supply, building permits, and manufacturers' new orders for nondefense capital goods. The negative contributors to the index from the largest negative contributor to the smallest - were vendor performance, average weekly manufacturing hours, and average weekly initial claims for unemployment insurance. Manufacturers' new orders for consumer goods and materials held steady for the month of May.
i recall folloiwing someone's data about 1 yr ago who used to recompute the wli's by including nasdaq data, so i'm pretty sure that "stock prices" here does not include nasdaq traded stocks.
Re: ECRI/WLI numbers
kind of funny how this sort of tracks the market?
its not exactly funny that they track the market. the market (the dow, i think) is one of its components.
> "With the market still sporting deep losses for the year, these
> managers are looking for any reason to buy stocks, which
> largely explains their eagerness to take highly volatile data,
> like the weekly unemployment claims that fell to their lowest
> level since July, as a sign the economy is turning," he says.
perhaps i don't understand the magic of "seasonal adjustment", but i just don't see the boolishness in these numbers:
Initial Claims (Seasonally Adjusted)
364,000 this week
381,000 last week
-17,000 change
Initial Claims (Raw Data)
431,641 this week
372,656 last week
+58,985 change
nor can i easily imagine what was so different about last week (relative to the previous week) that the adjustment went from +9000 to -90000.
re wireless mouse: i've not tried it, but my experience may serve as a caveat. if you use your computer frequently, battery life is a concern, and the batteries don't last that long and can die at the most inopportune moment.
anyway, i used mine for all of two months before going back to my old one. but i'm planning to get another one: the wireless mouse with the charger. (the saleskid in best buy assures me it'll be on sale closer to xmas.)
maybe i'm not old enuf to remember all of this, but my understanding of the semiconductor cycle seems to say that now is nothing like then (although i'm not quite sure what 'then' you're talking about'). anyway, my understanding of it is that its linked more to supply and demand and the 'chunky' nature of upgrading to new technology (building new fab, increase wafer size, decrease die size), which generally involve huge expense and lead to an increase in supply. but, again as i understand the pattern, that's almost always played out in an environment of increasing demand; its cyclical because the supply and demand curves don't match up, since you can't just add an epsilon of additional capacity when you moved to 0.13u for example.
anyway, if that's correct, this downturn has no real similarities to those previous ones ....
well, mlsoft. first, i have to say, i read this board but almost never post. second, i think you're one of the sharpest on here. (*)
anyway, i would agree with you to some extent - but probably in a more limited way than you intend. to me it does look like a "grand conspiracy" right now to make the economy look stronger than it is ("grand" because it involves lots of players who tweak the numbers (e.g. jobless claims via unusually large seasonal adjustment), report them (without reference to the adjustments), spin them, and so forth. and, in line with what you're saying, thats probably all targeted towards the consumer during xmas shopping season.
but on a larger scale, i *do* have to believe that the powers that be are not so panicked that they'd take the kind of risk you're suggesting as their solution to the problem. the way i see it: the market made its sharp reversal this fall as corporate bond spreads were breaking historical extremes. the situation would become pretty bad for our major corporations they are locked out of both equity and debt markets. so i'd think the turnaround that's been engineered is more directed towards that, with only a secondary target (short term) being consumers and wealth effect. and its had this effect: bonds, convertible debt, secondary offerings, and so forth. however, i have to believe that greenspan would not look kindly on wallstreets bubblicous fervor that's piggy backed on top of this.
and there - it seems to me, anyway - its just games as usual.
putting aside the big caps, the little craps that have moved - that _could_ be seen as similar to last year at this time. around then, i was watching kopn, attempting to short. though the rally continued through january, kopn lost its momentum in mid december and came crashing down early, after doing a public offering. right now, i've been watching it again, together with stuff like pmcs. in the latter case, the price has been jammed back up to august levels, even though short interest had already fallen to 12 month lows last month. but - to my eyes at least - there have been signs of distribution there all this week. and then there are two of your favorites, cof and mbi, which really haven't moved out of the range they've been trading in over the last few months.
(*) also a great admirer of LG, who saved me a lot of money in spring 2000, and don sew ..