Friday, March 4, 2011

Priced to Perfection

Even though the market is usually sleepy just before release of the monthly Jobs Report, it was anything but sleepy yesterday. There was just too much good news, i.e., the ISM report was strong, oil was down, the dollar was down, and rumors swept the floor that today's report would show job growth of 220,000 instead of the concensus of 185,000. So, the Dow soared 191 points!

It worries me that there was so little volume. Most investors were standing on the sidelines. There were buyers, but the sellers were on strike. Low volume makes the market more volatile or "spikey."

If the report shows much more than 220,000 jobs were created last month, the market should rise somewhat. If it was less than 185,000, you can expect the market to over-react and give back much of yesterday's gain. We'll see . . .