At 8:30 AM on the first Friday of every month, we get the month’s most important economic news — the jobless report. Today’s was OK.
Courtesy CNBC:
+ The jobless rate in September dropped 0.2 percentage points to 3.5%, the lowest since December 1969. (Everyone who wants to work is working.)
+ Nonfarm payrolls rose by 136,000 in September, below the 145,000 forecast by economists polled by Dow Jones. (Economists are rarely right. That’s why they call economics “the dismal science.”)
+ However, past numbers were revised higher. August was revised up to 168,000 from an initial estimate of 130,000, while July was increased to 166,000 from 159,000, for a net gain of 45,000.
+ Wages rose 2.9% for the year, the lowest increase since July 2018. (It’s bizarre that wages aren’t growing faster when the job market is so tight. But automation, IT — information technology — continue to have a huge impact. That’s why our portfolio has stocks like Docusign, Twilio, Servicenow, Salesforce, etc.)
Today might be a good day to sell some stocks you don’t feel comfortable owning long term.
We are definitely headed into a recession. In fact, Moody’s Analytics’ Mark Zandi says one-fifth of economy — manufacturing, farming, and shipping — is already in recession.
The consumer — 70% or so of the economy — is still doing well. But, for how long we don’t know.
Glorious Fall weather this morning:
Columbia County, mid New York State. Friday October 4. Photo by Mark Johnson, who’s also a great tennis player and my regular partner.
Buy and Hold. The perfect investment philosophy(??)
IBuy and Hold doesn’t work. You have to watch your stocks — or put in automatic stop loss orders. Here are the worst performers this year of the S&P500. It’s a fascinating (and depressing) list:
I started drawing some charts of random losers over the past year — not ones I own.
In short, either you make a conscious decision to own a stock that’s dropping — e.g. Macys has lots of valuable real estate — or you dump it because it’s reached your stop loss of, say, 15%
Waiting for Godot
In the play he never shows.
You must update your Apple Watch OS. Here’s why.
My grandkids get endless pleasure by tapping my watch and listening to Micky and Minnie tell time.
How life has changed
What a weekend
I’m off to Boston to take granddaughter Sophie to a Saturday matinee:
Should I wear my flower?
I suspect Sophie will kibosh the flower.
