Markets Eye Bush Speech for Hint on Jobs

[hang a left]

Markets Eye Bush Speech for Hint on Jobs
Thu Sep 2, 2004 05:09 PM ET



By Andrea Hopkins
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Financial markets will be all ears on Thursday night for hints about August job growth from President Bush, who gets an early peek at jobs data that everyone else will see on Friday.

By the time Bush addresses the Republican National Convention in New York at about 10 p.m. EDT, the Labor Department will have shared the August unemployment rate and job growth with the president's economic advisers.

Everyone else has to wait until 8:30 a.m. on Friday for the hotly anticipated news.

The snapshot of America's labor market is arguably the most important statistic in the global economy these days, because any sign of a slowdown in U.S. job growth could fuel worries the world's largest economy is faltering.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=6139432

[childslibrarian]

1. HA! If he doesn't mention them

The statistics are screwed... Remember Walmart today announced they had their worst month in 3 1/2years. Pretty impressive.

[Snellius]

2. Rumor on the floor was that the job figures were bullish

The markets grew increasingly more upbeat Thursday as rumors swirled among traders that President Bush would allude to bullish job growth numbers in his speech on the final night of the convention. Still, analysts were puzzled by the strength of the rally.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/040902/wall_street_20.html

Could it be possible that someone inside the Administration helped leak those numbers to spur an optimistic pre-speech bounce?

[snippy]

6. But volume was pretty light. If the White House was leaking the numbers

I think it would have been relected in higher volume in both the cash market and the futures.

[AlCzervik]

7. Thats a very good point

no barbarians at the gate could signal flat news.

[ozone_man]

8. I was wondering what the rally was about.

Somehow I doubt the jobs data will be good unless they cook the books more than usual. Just a hunch.

[TheWatcher]

9. Todays Rally was a bunch of hot air on Low Volume.

I could be wrong, but whoever bought this thing today is in for a RUDE awakening tomorrow.

INTEL's numbers were awful, and the Markets fell apart after hours.

Nasdaq Futures are currently -12 and S&P -3.

The whole thing was generated on the completely vague rumor that "job growth is seen as positive."

This was one of the Greatest Sucker Rallies of all time, and the Market tomorrow will tell a very different story.

I don't think the Job Numbers will be Good tomorrow, but they will not be believable even if they skew the numbers.

Like I said, I could be wrong, but today's market action was absurd.

[Langis]

3. It's going to be ugly

Bush won't say a word about jobs tonight.

[Nambe]

4. Eye the clouds to predict an Earthquake you dummys.

What a joke.

[lapfog_1]

5. Two days ago Fox was spinning this

and they sounded worried. "you have to look at the overall
job growth picture from the beginning of what has been, by
any measure, a robust recovery"...

(no, that's not an exact quote, but it's close to what I heard,
I wasn't paying enough attention to tivo it right away).

I bet specific numbers don't get mentioned.