Monday Market update and Calendar

The stock indexes were following Friday’s sell-off early this morning with the three key indexes weaker. No change in the bond and mortgage in early activity. The stock market is in trouble and I expect the key indexes will continue to decline in the next couple of weeks. The indexes have been looking vulnerable for two weeks and now the outlook is increasingly bearish. The March employment report released last Friday was a good one, 192k new jobs and Jan and February revised to add another 37K jobs from what was originally reported. While not a barn burner report, nevertheless it did confirm jobs are improving. The report was in reality not encouraging however; just because there was an increase in job creations on the headline, the quality of new jobs remains poor with most in low wage areas and the labor participation rate at 62.3% implying many have simply quit.

This Week’s Calendar:

         Monday,
            11:45 am James Bullard St. Louis Fed
            3:00 pm Feb consumer credit (+$14.0B)
         Tuesday,
           10:00 am Feb JOLTS report (4.0 mil from 3.97 mil in Jan)
            1:00 pm $$30B 3 yr note auction
            1:30 pm Narayana Kocherlakota (Minn. Fed)
            2:45 pm Charles Plosser (Philly Fed)
        Wednesday,
            7:00 am MBA weekly mortgage applications
            10:00 am Feb wholesale inventories (+0.6%)
            1:00 pm $21B 10 yr note auction
            2:00 pm FOMC minutes from last meeting
            3:30 pm Charles Evans Chicago Fed.
       Thursday,
           8:30 am weekly claims (-8K to 318K)
                        March import and export prices (imports +0.2%, exports +0.3%)
           11:50 am Charles Evans Chicago Fed again
           1:00 pm $13B 30 yr bond auction
           2:00 pm March Treasury budget (-$132.8B)
       Friday,
           8:30 am March PPI (+0.1%, core +0.2%)
           9:55 am U. of Michigan consumer sentiment index (81.0 from 80.0 at the end of March)

With not much happening this week I am suggesting to float your rate in the hopes that we may see some slight improvements, but stay focused and follow my BLOG as the tables can turn quickly.