US companies added substantially fewer jobs last month than analysts expected, according to this morning’s update from the Labor Dept. The 158,000 increase in private payrolls is a decent gain, but it’s well below Econoday.com’s consensus forecast for a 180,000 pop. Meantime, the slow grind lower for the year-over-year gain rolls on, echoing yesterday’s numbers from ADP. The labor market still has a fair amount of forward momentum, but the evidence is building that the peak has passed. That’s a concern at a time when the broad trend for growth has hit some turbulence.
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What does a bear market for the US equity market look like? Current conditions seem to fit the bill. The clues, after all, are piling up, including the early warning that’s still in progress via a relatively reliable quantitative tool—the Hidden Markov model (HMM). This is old news, of course, which means that it’s time to focus on early signs that the bear has run its course. Yes, it’s still early in the game on that score. But recognizing that the market’s bullish tide has probably turned leads to the obvious questions: What will a bottom look like and when will it arrive? No one really knows, but the toolkit that helped identify the start of a bear market will serve us well in the search for the seeds of a new bull market down the road.
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● Rising US layoffs hint at ebbing labor market momentum | Reuters
● US job cuts surge to 6-month high: Challenger | CNBC
● US factory orders fell sharply in Dec | AP
● Consumer Comfort Index in U.S. Little Changed Near 3-mo High | Bloomberg
● Friday’s jobs report could ease US recession fears. Or not. | WaPo
● If There Is a Recession in 2016, This Is How It Will Happen | NY Times