[Lee Adler]

The mainstream media proclaimed an unexpected “beat” of the first time unemployment claims number today. The fake, seasonally fudged number dropped to 358,000 in the week ended February 4. According to Bloomberg, the consensus of economists’ expectations was for 370,000. Aside from the fact that whether economists get a forecast right or not seems to be completely random, two facts stand out. First, the number that they are looking at is made up and fictional. Second the trend of the actual weekly number has been unflinchingly within a couple of points of an annual rate of decline of 9-10% for the past 18 months. As long as that trend is intact, there will be no reason to ever expect the weekly number to mean anything other than steady as she goes at the current rate. In fact, there’s really little point to forecasting the number on a weekly basis, because typically a big change one way one week is reversed the following week. What counts is the trend, which is another reason why all the old guys on Wall Street are so fond of repeating, “The trend is your friend.” It’s nice that the claims number is a weekly number, [...]

View the full article

[qqqbear]

Quite a game with at least more than two variables involved



http://www.cnbc.com/...employment_Rate

Attached thumbnail(s)

•