Suitably Flip

Jobless Thursday (With Philly Kicker)

For the 15th conescutive week, initial jobless claims were above 400,000.

In the week ending July 16, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 418,000, an increase of 10,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 408,000. The 4-week moving average was 421,250, a decrease of 2,750 from the previous week's revised average of 424,000.

Economists expected a milder increase to 410,000.

Last week's figure was (as is the fashion) revised higher.

At 10:00, we'll brace for another important datapoint, the Philadelphia Fed's monthly Business Outlook Survey.  This guy correctly and boldly predicted it would dip negative last month (pooh-poohing the consensus that saw it rising from 3.9 to 7.0), but I didn't expect it to tumble as low as it did - to a hideous -7.7, the lowest level outside a formal recession since the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Ever-hopeful economists see the Philly Fed bouncing back to zilch.zilch this morning, a level suggesting not outright contraction, but merely precise stagnation.  Huzzah!

I'm going to go ahead and predict that... won't happen.  The last three months have given us the swiftest decline in the history of the Philly Fed survey.  I'm not entirely convinced the plunging dagger below appears to have found a bottom just yet.

Stay tuned!

Update:  Color me pleasantly stupefied.  The index popped back up to 3.2, ahead (yes, ahead) of expectations, and making me look quite dumn.

Before you pop the cork, though, as illustrated above, this is not exactly a level to cheer about.  Excusing 2010's Recovery Summer and the last couple months' malaisey sequel, the business outlook hasn't been this crummy since the end of the recession.  What's more, it's still fully 40 points below its March 2011 peak.

And yet, it's an improvement.

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Jobless Thursday (With Philly Kicker)

For the 15th conescutive week, initial jobless claims were above 400,000.

In the week ending July 16, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 418,000, an increase of 10,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 408,000. The 4-week moving average was 421,250, a decrease of 2,750 from the previous week's revised average of 424,000.

Economists expected a milder increase to 410,000.

Last week's figure was (as is the fashion) revised higher.

At 10:00, we'll brace for another important datapoint, the Philadelphia Fed's monthly Business Outlook Survey.  This guy correctly and boldly predicted it would dip negative last month (pooh-poohing the consensus that saw it rising from 3.9 to 7.0), but I didn't expect it to tumble as low as it did - to a hideous -7.7, the lowest level outside a formal recession since the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Ever-hopeful economists see the Philly Fed bouncing back to zilch.zilch this morning, a level suggesting not outright contraction, but merely precise stagnation.  Huzzah!

I'm going to go ahead and predict that... won't happen.  The last three months have given us the swiftest decline in the history of the Philly Fed survey.  I'm not entirely convinced the plunging dagger below appears to have found a bottom just yet.

Stay tuned!

Update:  Color me pleasantly stupefied.  The index popped back up to 3.2, ahead (yes, ahead) of expectations, and making me look quite dumn.

Before you pop the cork, though, as illustrated above, this is not exactly a level to cheer about.  Excusing 2010's Recovery Summer and the last couple months' malaisey sequel, the business outlook hasn't been this crummy since the end of the recession.  What's more, it's still fully 40 points below its March 2011 peak.

And yet, it's an improvement.