Pretty Quiet Today–Rates Steady with Equity Markets Closed

Of course today all equity markets are closed–although the futures markets were open until 8:30 (central time) but didn’t show much movement. Interest rates and stock prices are totally joined at the hip right now so one can’t expect much movement without all markets being open.

Tomorrow we get an extremely important jobs number–with 155,000 new jobs being forecast for December with the unemployment rate pegged to be unchanged at 4.2%. Obviously a super soft number could help bring don interest rates while something hot is going to send rates up toward 5%.

I am now starting to put together a list of potential buys of perpetual preferreds–I have no intention of buying any for now, but I want to be prepared. The perpetuals that I pared back a few months ago are trading 4-10% below my sale price–for instance the Affiliated Managers 5.875% baby bond (MGR) is now at $22.40 and I had sold part of my position at $24.92 and it is likely I will move back into more shares at some point in time. We’ll see.