Tuesday, April 2, 2024
On the first trading day of the week, the markets show that they do not have much desire to push the all-time highs (on the S&P 500) even higher. That may have something to do with the wait for various jobs reports to roll out – the latest of which is the biggest: the employment situation, from the US government on Friday morning – but in any case the pre-markets are down after a year of mostly one yesterday bad day on the markets.
Today brings us that Job Vacancies and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) A decline to 8.8 million is expected for February from 8.9 million in the previous month. That's one million fewer JOLTS headlines than last April (9.9 million), which is about 2 million below the March 2022 headline count of 12.2 million. However, the current values are still well above the around 7.2 million that we consistently saw before the Corona crisis.
Factory orders come out after today's open and are expected to have grown a whopping +1.0% in February, compared to -3.6% in the previous month. This comes a day after the ISM manufacturing index rose back above the 50 mark (50.3%) in March and construction spending in February came in significantly lower than expected: -0.3% versus +0 .7% forecast. These data points are incremental, but help articulate developments on the productivity side of the U.S. economy.
Fed Governor Michelle Bowman and Fed Presidents Loretta Mester (Cleveland) and Mary Daly (San Francisco) are also guests today. This will be an important week to gather input from Fed members as the next Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting begins four weeks from today and “no change” in interest rates is again expected the next day. FOMC members will likely be ready to answer questions about the likelihood of the Fed moving forward with the first (of three) rate cuts in 2024 last June.
UnitedHealthcare (UNH – Free Report) is helping push the Dow lower in premarket trading today as a report emerged that the company's Medicare Advantage payments are expected to be lower than previously hoped. The average reimbursement rate was +3.7%, below analysts' expectations. The profitability of Medicare Advantage caused some anger among UnitedHealth shareholders — and similar health care providers as well Humana (BUZZ – Free Report) – over the last few years, with no sign of significant firming in price points.
Finally, it is expected that the figures for US car sales and deliveries will be announced starting today. Traditionally, this is not a big news dump on the hour, but rather a steady trickle of data throughout the trading day. We have already heard from the electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian (RIVN – Free Report), which reported first-quarter revenue that was in line with estimates. Stocks are down on the news, but they're down before the opening bell on all market indexes: the Dow is currently at -350 points, -40 points on the S&P and -172 points on the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
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