Medicare Agent News: One Day To Go

Thursday, December 29, 2022

One Day To Go

By Nicholas Jasinski | Thursday, December 29

Time to Climb. Stocks finally had a winning day during an otherwise dour holiday week. 474 S&P 500 stocks closed in the green, as the index added 1.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.0% and the Nasdaq Composite surged 2.6%.

It was a bad-news-is-good-news kind of day. This morning's unemployment insurance claims data showed a slightly higher-than-consensus 225,000 initial claims—up by 9,000 and extending a rising trend since September—while continuing claims rose to 1.71 million, their highest level since February. That was well above the consensus of 1.67 million and is up from 1.35 million in mid September.

Federal Reserve officials have explicitly linked a looser job market with a decline in inflation. It would mean slower wage growth and less demand in the economy for scarce and overpriced goods. That's a necessary factor for the Fed to slow and eventually pause its interest-rate increases.

This morning's data were a baby step in the right direction—toward potentially less upward pressure on wages and lower inflation. It's in the goldilocks zone: Not a collapse in hiring that raises recession fears, and not a sign of a relentlessly strong job market that requires even more restrictive monetary policy in 2023.

There will be plenty of more jobs data to parse next week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will report December employment figures next Friday, Jan. 6. Economists are forecasting what might be another not-too-hot, not-too-cold print: growth of 217,000 jobs. That would be down from the 263,000 jobs added in November and the slowest pace of hiring since December 2020.

But first, there's one trading day to go in 2022. Here's how things stand for the major indexes: The Dow is best off with a 8.6% decline year to date, versus a 19.2% loss by the S&P 500 and 33.0% by the Nasdaq.