Random Thoughts

The action on the first day of the month of September was highly unusual, and apparently at that time the employment number had leaked so the moves after that first day were much more likely to happen than before. After such bad starts the rest of the week has a standard deviation of 30 and only 50% chance of rise.

The 40 point S&P decline on Thursday was the fourth largest decline on a Thursday ever. By that time, the news was out, and the increase in unemployment was icing on the cake.

All this occured in conjunction with repeated highs in the fixed income prices around the world, and declines in the omniscient market in Israel below the round and Japan near three year lows of 12000 on the Nikkei.

To me, the key event was the raising of the Swedish discount rate during the night Thursday, causing an immediate 1% decline in all European equities. How come they weren't keyed in like the others to the forthcoming announcement?

The most hurtful piece of mass psychology was the naive notion about stocks having to go down because the P/E of 25 was the highest in 15 years, and that was bearish. Earnings are forecast next quarter to be the highest increase ever of 50% and you would think that people are taught to look at the future rather than the past for moves in markets.

There were many good economic numbers and bad economic numbers in the past week relative to expectations. What is it that caused the employment number to be the focus, other than the desire to paint the economy as weak before the election for obvious reasons of agrarianism? More important, why should a decline in employment at this stage be bearish for stock markets?

The one factor that made it seem so much like the end of the world was the the four day move down in S&P from the Thursday 8 28 close of 1298 to the Tuesday 9 04 close of 1236, a decline of 62 points was the second worst start of a week since the beginning of 2002, the only comparable being the four day move on 1 17 2008 before the French bank inside trading activity.