Stocks are higher on positive employment data

Encouraging news on the labor market buoyed stocks in early trading Wednesday as investors waited for the Federal Reserve to weigh in on the economy.

The ADP National Employment Report said 203,000 private sector jobs were lost in October, down from the 227,000 jobs lost in September. It was the seventh straight month of declining job losses.

That stirred hopes for a better-than-expected employment report from the Labor Department on Friday — the month’s most important piece of economic data.

Later Wednesday morning, the Institute for Supply Management will give an update on activity in the service sector. Growth in the service industry would add significant jobs to the economy.

The market’s main focus though is the Federal Reserve and what it has to say about the economy when it wraps up a two-day meeting on interest rates Wednesday afternoon.

Policy makers aren’t expected to raise the Fed’s

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Just one bit of meaningful economic data so far this week: The American service sector grew in September for the first time in a year. The Institute for Supply Management’s nonmanufacturing index scored 50.9 last month, just 9/10ths of a point above the growth/contraction tipping point. That certainly isn’t a booming service sector, but having contracted for the last 11 months… we’ll take it.

“The Chicago Fed’s national activity index,” notes our macro adviser and fellow data dork Rob Parenteau, “continues to point to a second-half 2009 real GDP recovery. With the September release, investors focused on the index — a composite of more than 80 monthly indicators that provides a reasonably good proxy for real GDP momentum — slipping to -0.9 from -0.46 the month before. We have never seen this index climb consistently straight up after a recession month after month, and this decline is well within the range

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As the summer draws to a close, the unemployment rate has stepped up 0.3%, to 9.7%, a level last seen coming out of the horrendous double-dip recession of 1980-2. Yes, private payrolls shed less than 200,000 jobs in August, which is a vast improvement over the nearly 750,000 jobs shed in the opening month of the year. But as summer draws to a close, look around and realize nearly one in 10 of your neighbors is chewing on their fingernails and trying to hustle up a new gig. Perhaps we should rename the recent holiday Unlabor Day, in honor of those sweating out one of the toughest job markets of the post-World War II period.

From a mainstream economic perspective, it should be renamed Leisure Day, as unemployment is interpreted as an individual choice of leisure over paid labor effort. Of course, only a tenured professor could be expected

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Oil prices steadied on Thursday as economic optimism from data showing that the U.S. service sector and retail sales improved was tempered by disappointing news from the labor market.

U.S. crude prices for October delivery rose 2 cents to $68.07 a barrel by 11:44 a.m. EDT (1644 GMT), after earlier reaching a high of $69.40 on U.S. stock gains and a weaker dollar.

London Brent crude was down 32 cents at $67.34 a barrel.

“Right now, there’s not a whole lot of momentum here in either direction. I think the trend for the week, which has been down, is still in force,” said Tom Bentz, senior commodity analyst, BNP Paribas commodity Futures Inc in New York.

“Everything seemed to kind of slip right after the jobs data,” he added.

U.S. jobless claims fell last week, according to a report released by the Department of Labor on Thursday, but the prior week’s figure was revised up.

The number of

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There is good news filtering through the Street today. It was enough to pull the market into positive territory, but will it keep us there? YRC Worldwide (NYSE:YRCW) and Patrick Industries (NASDAQ:PATK) help illustrate where we are heading.

Could it be? Are the markets actually increasing this morning on solid economic data and not just speculation or political maneuvering? If it’s true, it is certainly a sign of good things to come for the nation’s bulls.

Just after the opening bell, the Institute for Supply Management released its latest measurement of America’s manufacturing sector. With a rating of 52.9 in August, well above the 50.5 analysts were expecting, the vital industry proves to be growing once again.

The growth is already trickling down to the nation’s real estate market. According to the National Association of Realtors, pending home sales managed to rise for the sixth straight month, to

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The yen and dollar rose on Tuesday as fears of further U.S. bank failures overshadowed unexpectedly strong U.S. manufacturing data, boosting the two currencies’ safe-haven appeal.

Major U.S. stock indexes <.DJI> <.SPX> <.IXIC> were down nearly 2 percent in afternoon U.S. trading as investors fretted that chatter from hedge funds on a bank failure could prove accurate.

The decline came despite upbeat economic news from the United States and euro zone as well as a stabilization in Chinese shares after a rout on Monday.

The hedge fund talk “is a huge driver” of currency markets, said Dan Cook, senior market analyst at IG Markets Inc in Chicago. “When you have data like we had but the Dow drops, people are running for that safe haven.”

In midafternoon trading in New York the dollar index <.DXY>, which tracks a basket of six major currencies, was up 0.8 percent at 78.786, rebounding from a session low

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In distinct contrast to its report on manufacturing, the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing (Services) index fell in July to a reading of 46.4 from June’s 47.0. The July reading was a surprise as the consensus of economists expected it would rise to 48.0. This is the 10th straight month where the Services index has been below the 50 level, indicating contraction. The index, which has a much shorter history (since 1997) than the Manufacturing index, hit a record low in November at 37.4. It had been up for three months in a row, rising from March’s level of 40.8, so the July report breaks a "winning streak" for the index. The table below (from http://www.napm.org/) shows that while both the Manufacturing and Service indexes are below 50, the manufacturing number was substantially better than in June. The Manufacturing index came in well ahead of expectations. ...

The economic data continues to improve, but is still weak. The latest evidence of this comes from the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISP) manufacturing index, known as ISM (raw data and the table below from http://www.ism.ws/ISMReport/MfgROB.cfm?navItemNumber=12942), which came in at 48.9 for July. Any reading below 50 indicates that manufacturing is contracting, but the 4.1 point rise from June means that the rate of contraction has slowed significantly. More significantly, the forward-looking parts of the index, like new orders, are now comfortably above 50. The overall ISM has now been down for 18 months in a row -- a record -- but we are within easy distance of moving into positive territory. The reading was also well above the consensus expectation of a 46.5 reading. This is the seventh consecutive month where the ISM index has risen since it hit 32.9 back in December. The ...

U.S. stocks headed for a higher open on Monday as solid results from major European banks and expectations of a sales rebound for Ford Motor Co reinforced hopes that the recession is moderating.

Shares of Ford were up 7 percent at $8.58 before the bell after senior company executives said the automaker was on track to post its first monthly sales increase in two years.

In banking news, Barclays PLC reported an 8 percent rise in half-year profit, while HSBC Holdings PLC said its first-half profit halved from a year ago, but the results were better than the analyst consensus forecast.

“The greatest difficulty has been in financials, so the gains in HSBC and Barclays (are) adding to optimism and (suggest) that the worst may be over,” said Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group, in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

“It’s comforting to see that we are in a global rebound in earnings.”

The Select Sector SPDR Financial

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In the currency market, the dollar climbed higher against the euro. Late Monday, the euro was trading at $1.3986 vs. $1.4027 on Thursday. “Last Thursday we had very disappointing jobs data and people are saying that maybe the recovery is in doubt,” said Marc Chandler, of Brown Brothers Harriman, and the hangover from that report gave the buck an early boost. But “the dollar’s rally … has run its course and now the dollar is beginning to weaken again,” Chandler added.

Chandler also cited the upcoming G-8 summit, saying that “people are nervous about getting too long (on the) dollar ahead of the events of this week.”

Of the day’s hard number, analysts at Action Economics said that “a better than expected non-manufacturing ISM report, helped Wall Street eventually turn positive, which weighed the dollar down once again.”

The Institute for Supply Management reported yesterday that its nonmanufacturing index rose to

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