JPMorgan: Investors 'completely misreading' jobs report and economy

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by makloda, Jun 6, 2008.

  1. I love the "stocks should be up" part. Too bad we don't get paid by where prices should be trading at but where they are trading at.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aNrvd_rk.PUs&refer=home

    Buy Stocks as Investors `Misread' Jobs, JPMorgan Says (Update1)

    By Michael Patterson

    June 6 (Bloomberg) -- The biggest rise in the unemployment rate since 1986 is an ``aberration'' and investors who sold equities today are ``completely misreading'' the outlook for economic growth, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell as much as 412 points today after the Labor Department said the jobless rate increased by half a percentage point to 5.5 percent, the highest since October 2004, as an influx of students into the workforce drove the biggest jump in teenage unemployment since at least 1948.

    ``The surge in unemployment is probably an aberration,'' Thomas J. Lee, the New York-based chief U.S. equity strategist at JPMorgan, said in an interview. ``It's not because there were fewer jobs, it's because there were more people looking for jobs. Stocks are completely misreading the situation.''

    Lee, 39, wrote in an e-mail that ``stocks should be up'' after the report, which also showed payrolls fell by 49,000 in May, a smaller decline than economists surveyed by Bloomberg News had forecast. The strategist said the Dow industrials posted a 30 percent average gain in the 12 months following a jump in the unemployment rate by half a point or more since 1950. A rise in joblessness of that magnitude has occurred 16 times during that period, he said.

    ``Surges in unemployment happen at the end of the cycle,'' Lee said. ``This is showing you what happened in May, it's not telling you what's going to happen in the next 12 months. Unfortunately a lot of economic data is backward looking.''

    Lee expects the Standard & Poor's 500 Index to climb to 1,450 by the end of this year, according to a Bloomberg News survey on June 2. The S&P 500 dropped 3.1 percent to close at 1,360.68 today, while the Dow average fell 3.1 percent to 12,209.81, the steepest slide in 15 months. Crude oil rose almost $11 to settle at $138.54 a barrel.

    ``At the end of the day we still have things overhanging on stocks, we still have high oil prices and we still have the credit cycle we're going through,'' Lee said. ``But ultimately the economic data is showing the economy is pretty resilient.''
     
  2. Weird, they want people to sell into?

    Lets get a decent retracement on the recent upswing and then lets think about buying or not, lol.

    Best to leave opinions at the door and let price do the talking.
     


  3. What are they smoking. When unemployment turns it usually turns for a while. To me, this is signaling economic data is going to start turning negative. JPM, GS, MS all pumping crude and dumping stock, they want their clients to be the bagholders.