The Days Ahead: Small business optimism indicator. Fed will be in slient mode.

One-Minute Summary: We're writing this the day before the jobs number. This is typically a major data point for traders but we’re not traders and there’s probably no number that would lead us to change our outlook. Why? Well the estimate is for around 190,000 new jobs, compared to 250,000 last month but these numbers are subject to very big revisions…as much as 50,000 either way.

We know the unemployment rate will remain around 3.7%. The only item that may move the market is if there’s a big jump in average hourly earnings. But, if you've been following us, you’ll know we think real wages are unlikely to move much.

The markets had a very busy week. Much of the trading action is prop desks, algos and macro funds closing trading positions towards year-end. It’s not a time to react to headlines. Any view one has is likely to be mown down by stop loss trading. In the last 10 days, we've seen five days where the intraday move was more than 1.5%, six consecutive days of rises and one where the days started very badly and closed up.

Or as Leon Cooperman said “[quant managers] have created a tremendous amount of volatility in the market, scared the public, [and] effectively raised the cost of capital to business.”

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