Succinct Summations week ending February 7, 2014
Positives:
1. The market finished the week in the green despite getting off to the worst February start since 1983.
2. Bulls get nervous, pulling a historic $14.8B out of equity funds. That fear helped create the basis for the bounce we saw.
3. The unemployment rate fell from 6.7% to 6.6%.
4. Nissan and Chrysler (best January in 6 years) had good #’s, up 8% and 12% respectively
5. U.S. non-manufacturing ISM PMI came in at 54 v 53.7 expected, prior 53.
6. Factory orders fell 1.5% which was less than expected.
7. Initial jobless claims fell to 331k, less than expected and down from an upward-revised 351k.
8. Car sales in France & Spain rose for the fifth straight month in January.
Negatives:
1. Monday was the worst start to February since 1983.
2. U.S. only added 113k jobs in January v the 189k expected; December and January were the worst 2-month stretch of job growth in 3 years.
3. EM has been ravaged with 14 straight weeks of outflows and the biggest since 2010 (Contra: opportunity?)
4. The Dow has had 7 triple digit declines since the beginning of the year; Nasdaq had its first 100-point down day since late 2011.
5. ADP payrolls came in at 175k v 185 k expected, December numbers were revised down;
6. Two of the worst five days over the past 23 months from the Russell 2000 have come in the last 10 days.
7. Ford and GM January car sales were down 7.5% and 12% v expectations of ~2.5% decline for each; GM, the second biggest U.S. auto maker saw Q4 profits decline 13%
8. November factory orders were revised down from a 1.8% rise to a 1.5% rise.
9. ISM Manufacturing lowest since June and biggest miss v expectations since October 2008. Drop in new orders index in December was the largest since 1980
10. More than 1 in 6 men ages 25-54 don’t have a job.
What's been said:
Discussions found on the web: