Our shortened week is not without plenty of warnings. This morning, market participants got a glimpse of what might lie in store for tomorrow's August payroll results from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And in tow we'll get revised numbers for July.
The big payroll report is important as investors see it as a portent for whether the Fed will ultimately cut interest rates at its September Federal Open Market Committee policy meeting. If some of today's data are any indication, the answer to the question is looking more like "yes."
For one thing, Challenger Gray reported that job cuts in August rose 13.3% year-over-year to 85,979, the highest showing in the month since 2020. Then, private payrolls from ADP missed expectations, coming in at 54,000. Finally, initial claims came in hot at 237,000. That's a soup of things you'd expect if you were about to run into some disappointing payroll numbers.
Thursday Reading:
But for investors today, it's no matter. While the job market seems to be struggling, business data such as the ISM Services PMI beat expectations. And helping matters, subsets of the ISM report such as business activity, employment, new orders, and prices all trended in the right direction, too.
As such, investors are taking some good with the bad. All four major indexes are trending up intraday ahead of a handful of earnings in the after-hours session. Namely, Broadcom, Copart and Lululemon, among others.
TurboTax via TheStreet
-- Noah Weidner, markets reporter
