Today’s Markets
- In Asia, Japan -1.7% to 9555. Hong Kong -1.6% to 23254. China -1.4% to 2705. India -0.6% to 18494.
- In Europe, at midday, London -0.8%. Paris -1.1%. Frankfurt -1.1%.
- Futures at 7:00: Dow +0.2%. S&P +0.3%. Nasdaq +0.4%. Crude +0.2% to $100.47. Gold +0.1% to $1543.90.
Thursday’s Economic Calendar
- Chain Store Sales
8:30Initial Jobless Claims
8:30Productivity and Costs
10:00Factory Orders
10:30EIA Natural Gas Inventory
11:00EIA Petroleum Inventories
4:30 PMMoney Supply
4:30 PMFed Balance Sheet
The number of people who filed applications for unemployment compensation fell slightly last week to 422,000 from 428,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. The prior week’s number was revised up from an originally reported 424,000. Economists surveyed by MarketWatch had expected initial claims to decline to a seasonally adjusted 418,000 in the week ended May 28.
The monthly release of the ADP Payrolls report only began in late 2006, but it definitely gets its fair share of attention given that it always comes out two days prior to the even more closely-watched nonfarm payrolls report. Economists were looking for today’s ADP Payroll report to show job growth of 176,000, but the actual number came in much lower at just 38,000, making this the third biggest miss for the report in its short history.
In the table below we highlight how the nonfarm payrolls report did versus expectations following the weakest ADP reports on record. As shown, the two ADP misses that were bigger than today’s miss were actually followed up with two better than expected payrolls reports.
Spain sold 4 billion euros ($5.8 billion) of bonds, meeting the maximum target the Treasury set for the sale and sending the nation’s bonds higher.
The Treasury in Madrid said it sold 2.75 billion euros of three-year bonds at an average yield of 4.037 percent, compared with 3.568 percent the last time the securities were auctioned on April 7 and 4.118 percent on the secondary market before the sale. It also sold 1.2 billion euros of four-year debt at an average yield of 4.23 percent.
Demand for the three-year bonds was 2.49 times the amount sold, compared with 1.79 last month, and the bid-to-cover ratio for the longer-maturity debt was 2.9.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Jack Ma said he expects to reach an agreement with shareholders Yahoo! Inc. and Softbank Corp. (9984) over the spinoff of the company’s Alipay online payment business.
“I’m optimistic,” Ma said at the AllThingsD conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, yesterday. Ma said he’s sure a deal will be reached on Alipay, spun off to facilitate its application for an online payment license in China.
“Consumers are consolidating trips to the destinations perceived to offer the most overall value, such as Macy’s and Costco,” Wall Street Strategies analyst Brian Sozzi said in a research note.
But a rare sales miss by Victoria’s Secret owner Limited Brands showed that consumers, still facing high unemployment and gasoline prices near $4 a gallon, are choosy about where they spend and what they buy.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether trades in health care stocks by the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors as recently as last year were made using inside information, a person briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.
The investigation comes as SAC, one of the most prominent hedge funds in the world with $12 billion in assets under management, has become something of a focal point for authorities. Two former SAC portfolio managers have pleaded guilty to criminal charges of using inside information to trade technology stocks.
Bonus watching the guy that stole your laptop
On March 21, 2011, my MacBook was stolen from my apartment in Oakland, CA. I reported the crime to the police and even told them where it was, but they couldn’t help me due to lack of resources. Meanwhile, I’m using the awesome app, Hidden, to capture these photos of this guy who has my MacBook.