Final Update-Week of May 3, 2010

What a record day yesterday! Made stranger by a technical glitch in the trading system which caused the Dow Jones to sink as much as 1000 points at one point. It was the largest intraday drop in the history of the Stock Market. Yet, even when the technical glitch was realized and fixed (within minutes) the Dow still lost 350 points for the day. Credit markets rallied all day and have pretty much held to their gains this morning.

We were just hoping for a flat market today so we could keep those gains in the credit market, and instead we saw further selling in equities at the opening bell. Equity markets have pretty much made up their losses for the morning and are presently right at the flat line. What will happen the rest of today? Probably not much as traders try to get out of town for the weekend. Next week will probably see some recouping of the losses from the last 2 weeks I would suppose. There is still plenty of cash on the table and investors will want to buy in at these bargain prices.

The President actually took the podium this morning to announce the stellar numbers for job creation for the month of April. Our economy added 292,000 jobs in April . . . 66K were census workers, 59K were gov’t workers, 12K were in retail. Even still the unemployment rate rose to 9.9% -- as the President pointed out, this represents more people entering the “work force.” What that means is, the unemployment numbers are derived from hundreds of workers at the Labor Dept that call people and ask them if they are employed, if they are looking for a job . . . those “unemployed” people must not be employed and must be looking for a job (not have quit looking). This is the “work force” (a combination of those looking and those working) and 9.9% of them are looking for a job.

What the President said that really surprised me was, “the government is limited in what it can do.” I kind of had the impression that he thought the government could do everything for us. BUT . . . I digress, this isn’t a political op piece. I will be gone for an extended luncheon this morning, but here all morning and all afternoon for your questions. Get your locks in, as Secondary Marketing traders are always very slow to chase a falling market. Have a terrific Friday and a very restful and relaxing weekend!