Option Millionaires

[jimmybob]

Today's U.S. reports
Today's U.S. reports revealed small downside surprises in Q4 GDP, the December trade deficit for goods, and January Michigan sentiment, though analysts also saw a big upside January Chicago PMI surprise and a firm round of Q4 ECI data to leave a fairly mixed impact from data on the day. A surprising small 0.1% goods import gain in December, which masked a large "real" gain given a big 1.2% December import price drop, was behind both the GDP and trade surprises, and this suggests a bit less of the big global trade contraction that the market fears -- especially after yesterday's super-weak durable goods report. The 12.7-point Chicago PMI surge to a 55.6 one-year high bucked weakness in other producer sentiment reports, just as the downward Michigan sentiment revision to 92.0 bucked gains in the other January consumer confidence measures. The day's big data-dump did little to alter the overall outlook, on net