Friends

It was a rather strange reaction to a very soft ADP private payroll number this morning. Instead of adding 100,000 payrolls the private sector actually saw a contraction of 33,000 payrolls. Stocks not going down is really not a surprise these days but yields on long term Treasury bonds actually rose after the report (short term yields did fall originally). One might think that labor weakness would prompt a drop in interest rates. We get the government non-farm payroll number tomorrow with expectations that about 110,000 jobs were created in June. The bond market is likely to be both the Fed, and the Presidents fly in the ointment in coming months. We will see.

As for stocks, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 10 points to finish the day at 44,484. The S&P 500 was up 29 points to close at 6,227. The Nasdaq Composite Index was up 190 points to close at 20,393. Gold was up $17 to trade at $3,367 per ounce, while oil was up $1.76 to trade at $67.21 per barrel WTI.

Remember, markets are closed on Friday, so we get the jobs report tomorrow. Let’s see how the markets react as we head into the holiday weekend.

Have a nice evening everyone.