The Beat Goes On

As I was out of the office for the majority of the day today, tonight's comments will be brief.  Obviously, this morning's report from ADP showing private sector job growth of 297,000 positions was the catalyst for the generally positive mood in the equity markets.  This is yet another indication that the U.S. economy is healing, though the absolute number in this report should be taken with a healthy grain of salt as there was likely a fair amount of season hiring in the reported number.  However, this should raise expectations for Friday's non-farm payroll data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  In my mind, this raises the possibility for disappointment in a manner similar to what was seen ahead of the November numbers.

With such a bullish ADP report, I am a bit surprised that the equity markets didn't rally harder on the day.  However, this relatively small intraday range has been characteristic of this market for some time, which suggests, to me, that conviction is still lacking.  And with nearly 4 billion shares changing hands on the S&P 500, it's clear that volume was somewhat balanced between the bulls and bears.  As before, the bulls won out, but their wins appear to be by smaller and smaller margins.

Until tomorrow.....