Our site runs on donations to keep it running for free. Please consider donating if you enjoy your experience here!

Economic Numbers Show Slight Softening in Employment

Finally we see a jump in jobless claims with numbers up 17,000 for last week–to 240,000 and continuing claims up to 1.55 million from 1.5 million. Honestly not a giant jump on a historical basis, but directionally softer. On the other hand the durable goods orders and capital equipment orders were stronger than expected—overall mixed signals.

Equities are dead flat–yesterday at this time markets were flat and I though we would see a quiet day–boy was that incorrect with equities up over 1%. Guess we will have to wait and see–won’t change my plans.

Interest rates are at 3.77% on the 10 year treasury—Flat!

We have some other economic numbers today, but the FOMC minutes at 1 pm (central) could be market moving–volume will be light this afternoon and minor volume could mean big moves.

Last night we saw a tender offer from PS Business Parks for their outstanding preferreds—criminals and thieves is how some describe the tender. Shares will be delisted soon.

Today my goal is to purchase a baby bond issue from WR Berkley–no sure which issue yet, but I need to ‘eat my own cooking’ since I wrote the Seeking Alpha article last week.

12 thoughts on “Economic Numbers Show Slight Softening in Employment”

  1. So- Blackstone will delist them- and off to the gray mkt.
    My cost basis is 12.96 ave, so 14.60 or so for PSB-Z looks pretty good- that would give me almost all of the Dec div.
    It says the Company will pay the .125/sh fee to the brokerage handling them– I wonder about that- hate to lose that amount / share.

  2. I’m looking for a sharp decline of 400-600 points on the Dow Jones today, especially after the FED’s comments are released.

  3. University of M – 5-year inflation expectations rose from 2.9% to 3%. This is a number the Fed looks at. Wages – services – rents are very sticky and may take years to get inflation back to 2% even in a severe recession.

  4. Tim, The Turkey and the Holiday dinner haven’t even started yet. I’m waiting to see if we end up with a hangover and a promise to go on a diet from the stock market later next week. Not sure I want to move on anything with the low volumes today or Fri.
    On another subject, Lyn Alden has another article out on SA

    1. EKO–PSB was bought by a Blackstone affiliate and they made a tender and announced a delisting. Guess they don’t want any associated costs—or maybe they want them way low in price so they can slowly purchase them back on the cheap.

      1. I sold today at a 15% loss. The good news ( or it might be bad news, not sure about good news vs bad these days lol) is that I can redeploy the money into other preferreds that are also 15% down and I will eventually get the money back once stocks recover. Weird logic ?

        1. Fact. If you sell something down 15% to buy something similar down 18% you made a profit on the swap.

          1. Speaking of swaps, I did a “Martin” today… I sold GAINZ 4.875% due 11/1/28 @ 22.75 with YTM of 6.808% and bot GAINN 5% 5/1/26 at 22.97 with YTM = 7.83%. Talk about an inverted yield curve! There’s no logical reason for this difference in yields for the same credit other than that that I can see and even that doesn’t make sense…. Also got a 10% gain in GAINZ in 1 month… all in IRA… Go figure… Using SAJ and SAT as comparisons, imho it’s more of an issue of GAINZ being too high than GAINN being too low..

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *