July 6th, 2018 6:40 PM by Eric Fang
Friday saw a monthly jobs report that was slightly stronger than expected, and with upward revisions for the prior two months. Unemploy-ment ticked up just a bit, though, which was explained away as more people finally declaring themselves to be part of the work force. Seasonal adjustments are supposed to factor out the fact that a bunch of young people just graduated from college, but there is great room for statistical monkey business within those adjustments.
Wall Street was initially unsure of how it felt about the jobs report, but then traders eventually decided they liked it resulting in a fairly strong up day, and on strong breadth numbers. I read the following from a newsletter: Interest-rate sensitive dividend stocks such as telecoms and pipelines had a tough first half as the Fed continued their interest rate hikes. Maybe that's why some telecom stocks were down. The borrowing cost was high for those companies when the interest rates are higher. Maybe next time we should purchase those stocks when Fed started lowering the rates.