The important news for this morning is the jobless data.
INITIAL JOBLESS CLAIMS: 380K V 365KE; CONTINUING CLAIMS: 3.02M V 2.950ME
- Prior Initial Jobless Claims revised from 342K to 345 K
- Prior Continuing Claims revised from 2.934M to 2.945M
- Highest Continuing Claims since April 2004
Jobless claims continues to increase unabated. The all important continuing claims has reached above 3 Million people.
MAR PERSONAL INCOME: 0.3 V 0.4%E; PERSONAL SPENDING: 0.4% V 0.2%E
Although the personal spending is a couple ticks higher than what economists were anticipating, it in no way means there is an improvement. When personal spending is charted over the long term it is then we see the declines in spending are worsening.
The bulk of March’s gains in spending were price related. Real spending was increased a tepid 0.1% in March and is up only 2% on a year-ago basis. In March, real durable goods spending declined 0.5%, real non durable goods and service spending both advance 0.2%.
Also, personal savings rate continues to drop. That is a ‘no brainer’ as people have less money to save as more and more of it is going to food and energy. But even without the food and energy cost increases, savings have been declining for years with other cost of living increases.
When the credit cards run out of available credit, then those who have been getting by… will be broke.
Exxon mobile (XOM) released earnings and they missed. Oh, they still made a crap load of money. But the pile of that crap was just a bit smaller than what was expected.
XOM:
REPORTS Q1 $2.03 V $2.14E, R $116.8B V $124.43BE
- Production on oil equivalent basis -5.6% y/y
- Q1 output 4.18M boe equivalent/day v 4.43M y/y
- Net production of crude oil and natural gas liquids 2.47M bpd v 2.74M bpd y/y
- Q1 CAPEX, exploration spending $5.5B, +30% y/y
- Expects no change in production until talks with unions are concluded
Reminder: 10:00 am we get ISM Data and Construction Spending Data
2 Comments
May 1st, 2008 at 9:20 am
Good Morning, my Friend…
Everything you have been alerting us to over the last
nine months is now coming to fruition. The average
consumer is in deep doo-doo, but the lying ass
government continues to skew economic numbers
to make them less bad.
Chuck, please post us when you initiate the SDS
trade.
Have a good one,
Noel
May 1st, 2008 at 11:39 am
Hey Noel,
Personally, I have SDS now. I am taking a tiny bit more risk than Chuck is on the entry, but I’m willing to do that. Not for everybody, I know, but I’m ok with it.