U.S. markets are closed today for the Fourth of July holiday, but gloom continues to reign on Wall Street and other major global markets. For the most part, technical analysts maintain their negative view, providing little optimism that stocks will reverse a two-month trend of losses by week’s end.
“Only about 30 percent of stocks are above their 200-day moving averages, so the vast majority are on a downtrend,†noted Shield & Co. analyst Frank Getz, in New York. “The market needs to prove itself with a rally on strong volume, and that’s going to be hard to get with the holiday and the bad news we’ve seen creating more pessimismâ€Â.
The June Non-Farm Payroll report last Friday showed that employment remains a primary concern. A total of 125,000 jobs were lost in June, representing the first month-to-month loss since last October. It was noted however, that approximately 225,000 part-time census jobs wrapped up last month, and this was the main reason negative job growth was recorded in June.
Nevertheless, total private employment gained by 83,000 positions. To date, 593,000 new jobs have been created in the private sector and unemployment fell slightly to 9.5 percent from 9.7 percent.
While unemployment remains much higher than June of 2007 when nearly 8 million more people were working than are currently employed, there are some who suggest that the market is due for a rebound. As we near the so-called corporate “earnings seasonâ€Â, John Butters, Director of U.S. Earnings for Thompson Reuters, said that there were 1.2 negative company pre-announcements for each positive one. Generally, the ratio is closer to 2 negative for each positive.
