Don't Read Too Much Into the Unemployment Rpt.

March’s US Employment Situation Report came out Friday, and we feel bad for it. Friday was a stock market holiday, so investors and traders couldn’t react to it. It couldn’t “cause” minute-by-minute swings that headlines would read far too much into. It couldn’t start out as “bad” for stocks if the market was down in the morning yet suddenly become “good” if the S&P 500 was in the green by lunchtime. The song and dance were silent. But maybe that is for the best, because the odd narratives surrounding the report—everyone trying to figure out if an expectation-smashing 178,000 nonfarm payroll addition was good news—showed the follies of trying to read into this.[i] Investors are always best off looking forward, not at a late-lagging indicator from last month. Read Full Article »