Tomorrow, Friday, June 7, brings the May jobs report. Right now economists surveyed by Bloomberg are looking for the economy to add a robust 175,000 jobs with unemployment holding steady at 3.6% (as 49-year low) and average hourly wages growing at a very positive 3.2% annual rate.
The prospect of those numbers tomorrow is enough to throw worries about the trade war with China and Mexico into the shade today. As of 2 p.m. New York time the Standard & Poor’s 500 index is head 0.18% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 0.33%. The NASDAQ Composite is holding at even, but the Russell 2000 small cap index is down 0.83% on the day.
On the other side of the “just right” Goldilocks market, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury fell to 2.12% down 2 basis points as Treasury prices moved up modestly. The yield on the 2-year note was 1.86% and on the 3-month bill 2.31%. (Wow, is that an inverted yield curve.!)
Oil, which dropped into a bear market (down 22% from its April high) after U.S. crude inventories grew by 22 million barrels las week (the biggest jump in data what goes back to 1990) is up a tad to $51.82 a barrel (ahead 0.27%) for West Texas Intermediate and to $60.81 a barrel (up 0.30%) for the Brent crude benchmark. That keeps both benchmarks very close to the $50 a barrel and $60 a barrel levels that might trigger an abrupt further decline.
The odds of an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve at its July 31 meeting remain elevated, according to the Fed Funds Futures market and the CME FedWatch tool. The odds of an interest rate cut by the Fed at that meeting stand at 69.9%.
