Weekly jobless claims from the Labor Department had shown three consecutive increases, but that is now being undone. The weekly claims fell by a sharp 42,000, from 388,000 down to 346,000 for the past week. This was much better than expected, as the Bloomberg consensus was 365,000 for the week. It was also better than every economist was expecting as the range was put at 350,000 to 375,000.
The only bad news we found in the weekly jobless claims data is that the already bad 385,000 claims initially reported last week was revised higher to 388,000.
Another report on Thursday morning was the import and export prices as a preliminary look at inflation. This was for March, and it showed that export prices were down by 0.4%, versus the 0.1% gain that had been called for by Bloomberg. Import prices also fell by 0.5% in March, but that was by and large in line with expectations of the Bloomberg consensus.
The report on imports and exports should keep inflation expectations somewhat subdued. On Friday we get a report from the Labor Department on producer prices as a measurement of wholesale inflation, and Bloomberg has a prediction as of now at -0.2% on the headline PPI and a gain of 0.2% on the core PPI, after stripping out food and energy.
Futures are fighting to find real direction this morning as the S&P 500 futures are up 0.30 and DJIA futures are down two points.
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