Stocks climbed after a surprisingly strong jobs report.
First the scoreboard:
S&P500: 1,770.54 +23.39, +1.34%
Dow: 15,761.72 +167.74, +1.08%
NASDAQ: 3,919.23 +61.90, +1.60%
And now the top stories:
- Nonfarm payrolls jumped 204,000 in October, crushing expectations of 120,000. Private payrolls were up 212,000.
- The labor force participation rate fell to 62.8% from 63.2% and the unemployment rate ticked to 7.3% from 7.2%. But as BI's Sam Ro and Capital Economics' Paul Ashworth explained, that rate comes from a different survey than the one used to calculate payrolls. As a result, the drop may have been where the government shutdown had the largest impact. Part-time jobs fell 127,000, but this also may have been affected by drawing from household data. Next month should confirm whether all this was an anomaly.
- Despite the noise, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi's Chris Rupkey is quite bullish. In a note to clients he wrote, "...we couldn't get better news with jobs running much stronger than expected. The labor market has considerable momentum and to ask whether it is sustainable is just not the right question. The outlook for the economy suddenly brightened today. We are more optimistic than ever that the economy has not just reached escape velocity, 200K jobs increases in two of the last three months, mean the labor market is blasting off."
- Personal income climbed 0.5%, beating expectations of 0.3%. Spending was in-line at 0.2%, which was right in line with expectations.
- The UMichigan consumer confidence index unexpectedly fell to 72.0 in November from 73.2 last month, missing expectations of 74.5. The economic conditions sub-index fell to 87.2 from October's 89.9 reading. "We believe that the deceleration in purchase expectations is worrying as a protracted period of lower consumer confidence could weigh further on Q4 economic growth, forecasts of which are already being revised lower due to slowing consumer spending momentum in Q3," TD Securities' Gennadiy Goldberg said.
- Ubiquitious online food ordering portal Seamless says it's eyeing going public next year, TheDeal's Jonathan Marino reported. The company bought its main rival GrubHub earlier this year
- Bitcoin prices have climbed $40 on the Mt. Gox exchange to $350. BI's Henry Blodget explained why it now appears Bitcoin's valuation is basically unknowable.
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