Amazing

It's amazing how brazen they are.

After yesterday's Initial Claims beat, this is what I said in the post, ECB Surprises, ES Rises ,

"the US comes along with Initial Claims which printed at its lowest since January 2008 at 324k. This is well below expectations of 345. This is the biggest beat since September 2011. Bloomberg's first sentence in their report of I.C. was, "Jobless claims are moving surprisingly lower and there's no special factors to explain away the improvement." One has to wonder what tomorrow's Employment report looks like and if the F_E_D's odd policy comments yesterday were exactly as I thought, the next logical step in removing or normalizing accommodative policy, the "unexplained" improvement in Initial Claims would seem to support the F_E_D backing away as they not too long ago set EMPLOYMENT as one of the main factors on their yardstick...VERY INTERESTING. Tomorrow could be even more INTERESTING (Wink, wink)."


Initial Claims beat and came in at +165,000, on expectations of +140,000, and following a revision to the March number from 88K to 138K. The unemployment rate declined from 7.6% to 7.5% beating, expectations of an unchanged print. The Labor Force Participation rate is unchanged.

This seems like heavily massaged data, after yesterday's Jobs data, I suspected we'd see an abnormal print, after the F_O_M_C policy announcement, it's very clear.

The ES futures jumped 15 points on the data, so it's a good thing we noted those red flags yesterday and did not short the market, this is the volatility I was talking about and we are above the 1600 mark that was so obvious.

The flip side is the F_E_D set employment as one of their yardstick accommodation mandates, they are clearly looking for the exit and once the market realizes this which shouldn't take more than a few days, it's down she goes.

I'm going to look, but with a spike like that, I'm not sure there are any signals worth a lick until thee dust settles, I'd sit tight until then and don't try to top tick the market without good reason.