NASDAQ New High

The stock market had one of its best days of the year; I think it was the second best day.  The Dow was up 440 points - just under 1.8%.  The NASDAQ was up 132 points; about the exact same percentage as the Dow.  The NASDAQ is now at an all-time record high! It closed at 7,60.81. That is a new record. We have taken out the high from before the 10% correction.  The NASDAQ is the only major index that has done that.  That is not the case for the Dow, the S&P or even the Russell 2000, but the NASDAQ has taken off.

Optimism Around Stocks Not Affected by Tariffs

Remember I talked about this on my last podcast; people are trying to create the idea that these tariffs might be good for U.S. based companies, maybe some of our technology companies.  I don't know how people are trying to spin this thing, but there's a lot of optimism about the sector of the economy that people believe will be not affected by the tariffs. Maybe there is a narrower set of stocks that everybody wants to pile into, and those stocks are disproportionately in the NASDAQ.

Perfect Nonfarm Payrolls Report

But the catalyst today was the perfect Nonfarm Payroll Report that came out today.  If I were a conspiratorial person, which I am not, you could really say, "Wait a minute.  This looks too good to be true. This is just what the doctor ordered ."  Remember, last time we had the jobs report, even though the jobs number itself was weaker than expected, the markets were spooked by the bigger jump in wages.  In fact, a lot of people thought that the 2.9% YoY growth in wages, and I think the month number was up maybe +.3, that that was really the catalyst for the big sell-off  that we had.  In fact, that was the number that everybody was looking for; not maybe the headline number, but the wage number.  People wanted to confirm that wages were really growing.

Market Worries Boost in Employment Might Hike Wages Too Much

Trump, of course, every time he talks, he talks about the enormous growth in wages that is really not taking place, although, the President talks about a lot of things that aren't happening and claims credit for them.  But the market was worried that we might get a bigger boost in wages which might mean inflation is coming, maybe the Fed will have to raise rates 4 times, instead of 3 times.

Beautiful Statistics

But yesterday, I watched the President's speech, and I'll get to that later, when he talked about the tariffs.  One of the things he was talking about when he was talking about the statistics, and specifically he was talking about the jobs numbers and the unemployment numbers - he referred to the statistics as being "beautiful". Everything was perfect, we had record low numbers: African-American unemployment was down, unemployment rate the lowest in I don't know how many years, and he said, "These statistics are beautiful!" That is his new word to describe government employment statistics.

Phony, Fake, Fraud, a Joke, Fiction, a Hoax

Well he had different words to describe those identical statistics when he was a candidate, and beautiful wasn't among them.  The words that he used as a candidate when describing the government jobs numbers were: phony, fake, fraud, a joke, fiction, a hoax.  Those were the adjectives he used when he was a candidate.  Now he says the numbers are beautiful.