Job Figures…A Market Rally?
Posted by moolahtime on December 5, 2008
Today’s posting will be short and sweet as there isn’t too much out of the ordinary to write about.
The official job loss figures came out and it wasn’t pretty. For November, employers cut 533,000 jobs which was the most in 34 years. This catapulted the unemployment rate to 6.7%. These new figures, released by the Labor Department Friday, showed the crucial employment market deteriorating at a rapid rate and handed Americans some more grim news right before the holidays. The net loss of more than a half million jobs was far worse than analysts expected.
So, what did the markets do? Initially on the news, the Dow dived by circa 200 points but finished the day in the green by almost 260 points! It was amazing and for those of you having bought blue chips were rewarded.
However, a speculative recommendation I made yesterday on SRS nosedived by the end of the day. As I said, this can be volatile, and you should only allocate a small amount of capital towards this at any one trade. I sold some shares early in the day at near break even because I was concerned that it hadn’t increased by much considering the market as a whole was tanking. The 4.5% mortgage rate by the government has provided artificial optimism for the public. This only affects residential and SRS is primarily commercial focused. Overall, I am slightly in the red on SRS on my current holdings (I do have some profits from day trading) but decided to buy a bunch more once it hit $98. I still believe in my thesis that I outlined in yesterday’s post and am confident that this will surely rebound providing for some nice short term profits. However, if we have that year end rally, then everything will rise which will be a negative for SRS.
Also, I know it’s tough times for us all and thought you might find a blog link for “Credit Card Watch” that is posted in the Blogroll section of my blog to be of interest.
Hope your weekend is going well, and here is an interesting article for you:
- This article discusses the manipulation of gold prices and why the government may be forced to take the other side and force gold prices higher to decrease the value of the US dollar, thereby decreasing the value of their debt obligations.
- Moolah
