Blue World Jobs Report Analysis November 08 2013

Posted on November 8, 2013 by blueworldadmin

Blue World Employment Situation Report Analysis

Release Date: Usually the first Friday of each month

Release Site: www.bls.gov

Market Sensitivity: VERY HIGH

Management Value: VERY HIGH

Friday, November 08, 2013

Brain surgery is not rocket science to a brain surgeon©

The Good News Stops at the Headlines…again.

Yesterday I was introduced to a great phrase. In a nod to my friends at Slocum out of Minneapolis I am reporting, “The good news has a lot of hair on it.”

In a quick take on the GDP report that surprised the “experts” to the upside, the news wasn’t very good. The 2.8 percent growth came in .8 percent higher than expected, but of that .83 was inventories, so actual growth was below 2 percent. In addition, the downward trend in personal expenditures that began in 2010 continues. Those are just a couple of the lowlights.

The jobs report didn’t offer much better. The net jobs created in the private sector came in at 212,000. They are reporting 204,000 because that number includes government, which shed 8,000 jobs, so the net private sector number is actually 212,000. While not the 250,000 we need to break even, it sounds better than the low one hundreds we’ve seen lately, right? Sorry.

I hope you’re sitting down.

The civilian labor force dropped by 720,000 dragging the participation rate down a whopping .4 percent to 62.8 percent. To put this in perspective, the records on participation rate go back to 1948. This number is an all-time record low and running 10 points lower than it was at the worst of the recession. I grow so weary of the word “recovery.”

The number of those unemployed rose, and the number of those employed fell by 735,000! The math is simple – 212,000 new jobs, with 735,000 fewer people with jobs, and the number of those reported as not in the labor force soared by…wait for it…932,000.

We appear to be seeing Obamacare’s initial effect on the labor market as those involuntarily working part-time is on the rise for the past three months.

The overall workweek hours, manufacturing hours, and manufacturing overtime hours are all flat while construction’s week shortened by .2 hours.

The conclusion is becoming almost boilerplate, folks. If you invest real money and employ real people, we cannot stress caution enough. The risks are great and many. Fiscal policy is indefensible and not limited to our shores. Bond buying seems to never end, and the markets now celebrate bad fundamentals for fear the Fed will quit “stimulating.” We are not trying to make a living in rational times, and there is no evidence that anyone who could has any appetite to change it. Stay safe out there.

In addition to the print version on December 6^th I am scheduled to do live analysis on Chicago WBBM AM780 and 105.9FM’s Noon Business Hour at about 12:10pm Central. I hope you can make it.

Have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving.

Thanks for reading and, please, stay tuned…

Release Site: www.bls.gov

Every effort is made to ensure accuracy of data transcription but accuracy cannot be guaranteed. The official release site should be cross referenced. The analysis represents the opinion of Blue World Asset Managers, Ltd. who does not warrant or guarantee predictions based on its analysis.

©Blue World Asset Managers, LTD Friday, November 08, 2013

Blue World Employment Situation Report Analysis October 22, 2013

Posted on October 22, 2013 by blueworldadmin

Blue World Employment Situation Report Analysis

Release Date: Usually the first Friday of each month

Release Site: www.bls.gov

Market Sensitivity: VERY HIGH

Management Value: VERY HIGH

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Brain surgery is not rocket science to a brain surgeon©

Better late than… Sorry. We can’t back that up.

This is what we waited for? The numbers are short so let’s get to ‘em right away.

The BLS reports total non-farm payroll increased by 148,000 for September. That was a pretty big miss regarding the expectations of the “experts” but it gets worse. In a switch from recent reports, government added 22,000 to the total, making the private sector gains even less inspiring at 126,000. The rate fell to 7.2 percent, but we all know why. The number of those not in the labor force continues its meteoric rise and is mirrored by the participation rate free-fall. The work week, overtime and wage increases remain quite underwhelming as the diffusion rate in manufacturing continues its flirtation with 50.

The Madness of King Market

We’d like to take a moment to focus on the markets. We saw the following headline this morning:

U.S. equity markets rallied after a round of tepid data on the U.S. labor market stoked hopes the Federal Reserve might have to wait until as late as March to begin paring back its massive bond-buying program.

At the top of each jobs report analysis we identify the jobs report influence over markets as VERY HIGH. That remains true, however, it has become for the opposite reason it used to. We remain very skeptical and cautious regarding the markets because, in spite of them doing so for this long, we can’t get comfortable with the idea that bad economic news will perpetually cause the markets to fly because they believe the Fed won’t stop buying bonds. This is very unsettling. The so-called quantitative easing, bond buying, etc., is one of the biggest risks to our long term economic outlook (explained at ) so the markets cause us great pause these days as they put more emphasis on government action than they do on economic fundamentals. Very unsettling.

The next report has been rescheduled for release on Friday, November 8, the second Friday of the month, due to the partial shutdown earlier this month.

Thanks for reading, and please stay tuned…

Release Site: www.bls.gov

©Blue World Asset Managers, LTD Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Blue World Employment Situation Report Analysis 8-2-2013

Posted on August 2, 2013 by blueworldadmin

Blue World Employment Situation Report Analysis

Release Date: Usually the first Friday of each month

Release Site: www.bls.gov

Market Sensitivity: VERY HIGH

Management Value: VERY HIGH

Friday, August 02, 2013

Brain surgery is not rocket science to a brain surgeon©

The Song That Stays the Same…

If you’ve ever watched a soap opera, dropped it and picked it up again about a year later you found you hadn’t missed much. It feels like that with this damn jobs report. We missed the June report due to the karate national championships in Greenville, SC. Just a quick shout out to Greenville. What a great town.

Hey, new jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell!! I remember the good old days when news like that signaled an improving economy. Now, as our readers know, it just means that we were on the plus side of new jobs but the number of those reporting as available to work either increased less or, as is the case for July 2013, shrank! That’s right, we added net 162k jobs in July but the civilian labor force got smaller…again. Correspondingly, the participation rate fell by .1 and those reported as not in the labor force grew by nearly a quarter of a million! Many of the job gains came from the lower end in food service and hospitality.

Some other revealing negatives showed up. Wages are down overall and in manufacturing in particular. The work week got shorter for all employees and is back to where it was in July of 2012 but the manufacturing work week has fallen below the one year ago level and overtime hours fell by .2, an unusually large move.

So, what’s new(s)? We have to start to wonder about something. We have been very critical of the use of the word “recovery” over the past many months because we have argued (and defended) a position that we are not in recovery. Trivial data like historically low participation rates, GDP below 2 percent, trendless regional fed reports, etc. tend to cast doubt on recovery assertions. After all, we have just learned that for every job created since the “end” of the recession we have added at least two people to the food stamps rolls. That has never been a sign of recovery in America and we should not accept it as such now or ever. BUT, if we were to concede a recovery by its broadest, most charitable definition we are at a point where we have to ask this. “How long does a ‘recovery’ last?” If the recession ended in 2009 as commonly reported, shouldn’t we have been talking about the recovery in the past tense by now? How many “recoveries” last four years? How many “recoveries” boast stats like these? It just doesn’t hold water, folks.

Investors, business managers and owners, we still urge caution, defensive strategies and avoidance of rose colored glasses brand optimism. It’s still very weak out there with huge uncertainty and risks internationally and domestically. Obamacare implementation is among the biggest. They are trying to deny O-care’s effect on the move toward part-time employment but just take a look at the Employed Persons at Work Part Time section near the bottom of Table A at www.bls.gov.

We hope you’ve all had a great summer and God bless all the kids returning to school. Work hard and remember, never study to “pass the test.” Always study from the point of view “could I explain this to someone else.”

See you in September.

Thanks for reading and, please, stay tuned…

Release Site: www.bls.gov

©Blue World Asset Managers, LTD Friday, August 02, 2013

Pixels vs. Images: A Quick Take on GDP, Markets, Business and the Economy

Posted on June 26, 2013 by blueworldadmin

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Pixels vs. Images: A Quick Take on GDP, Markets, Business and the Economy

So, China growth slows and the U.S. markets tank. U.S. growth slows and the U.S. markets fly? That’s what happened this month. We even saw a market “expert’s” headline today “GDP Revised Down but Street Still Optimistic on Economy.” “Based on what” is the question we’d ask. Again, every headline today indicates the drop in GDP was “unexpected.” This continues to be our problem with the “experts.” They read one day’s news and proclaim a definitive view on the economy. The next day some new data is released and we get a whole new view, as if yesterday’s news was totally negated or, even worse, totally forgotten.

For market investors that’s fine AS LONG AS they know how to play defense. We, obviously, don’t object to a rising market whatever the reason. We just worry about the folks who are naked. As we’ve said, it makes us nervous when there are no fundamentals to support a bull market. We are happy to make money on it but we are ready for reality shocks, too. As long as you’ve got your swinging accounts, stops, puts, inverse ETFs, long-short strategies, or whatever other defense you/your advisor employs then let the market run and run with it. We do.

Running a business is a different story. As managers we have to be more concerned with economic fundamentals because we don’t have the kind of defensive measures that are available in the markets. The only defense we have is a keen awareness of what the economy is actually doing so that we can make appropriate decisions on everything from hours of operation to inventory stocks to employment.

The deplorable GDP is NOT a surprise if we’ve watched AND REMEMBERED all the other reports from this and previous periods. No report is valuable unto itself. Each must be viewed through the prism of the universe of data sets. Then each new data set must be triangulated with and compared to the rest of that universe. It’s the difference between viewing a single pixel vs. the entire image. Each data point that is released is just a single pixel in the image that is created when all the pixels are viewed together.

That’s how Blue World does it. For example, starting with the two most recent employment reports (Blue World Analysis at & ) we saw a continuing trend of flat hours, overtime hours and wage growth in manufacturing. The diffusion index (number of companies hiring) fell below fifty percent and the labor force remains stagnant. Then, all the regional Fed reports ranged from negative elements to negative across the board in each of the last two months. Sure, we hear some of you yelling at us about the positive Durable Goods report this month but, again, viewed historically the reports has been very volatile. “Good” is nowhere near what “good” should/used to be and the current year over year level is no better than February of 2012 and far worse than it was in 2010! See Econoday’s chart at .

The markets do not reflect reality. Please don’t use them as a gauge to make decisions in your sector, business or department. Just ride them as they produce and let us know if you’d like help with the defense.

There is tremendous uncertainty regarding the effect of tax policy, ObamaCare, immigration reform and a multitude of other domestic and international issues. Follow Blue World for a big-picture take on the economy and to aid in business decisions. Call us for individual help and analysis.

Our assessment continues to be that the economy is not in a meaningful recovery. We have an extensive collection of pixels that we organize into an image to back up that assessment. That’s why we typically only use the word “unexpected” when we read an “expert” who got it right.

As always, thanks for taking the time and stay tuned…

Every effort is made to ensure accuracy of data transcription but accuracy cannot be guaranteed. Referenced sources should be reviewed. Any analysis represents the opinion of Blue World Asset Managers, Ltd. who does not warrant or guarantee predictions based on its analysis.

Counterfeiting is a Very Serious Crime…Unless the Fed Does It??

Posted on June 20, 2013 by blueworldadmin

Thursday, June 20, 2013

We have been ringing the alarm bell about this in our posts and Matt has spoken of it on the radio. We are getting more and more questions about it as the likelihood of slowing the current bond buying program (Q.E. whatever) looms.

Ask anyone, including market “experts” if it’s a good idea or bad idea for the government to “kick the can down the road” and they’ll say it’s a bad idea. Then ask if they want the Fed to slow the bond buying program and they’ll exclaim “NO” in a panicked voice! What this betrays is a complete lack of understanding of what “Quantitative Easing” actually is.

First of all, it should be of great concern to anyone with money in the markets that government action, even contemplated government action, has become more important than economic fundamentals. Think of how absurd it is for the markets to panic at the thought of improving economic conditions that would lead to LESS government interference. Ya get that? THE MARKETS SELL OFF WHEN THE ECONOMY SHOWS SIGNS OF IMPROVING!! That is absolutely terrifying. When reality catches up, and it always will eventually, the results for those in the markets unprotected will be potentially catastrophic.

So, what is “Quantitative Easing” in actual practice? As with most things it is very simple. The Fed is buying short term debt (bonds) that are nearing expiration and refinancing the debt for a longer term. It is the very definition of “kicking the can down the road.” That is deplorably dangerous economic policy as it is, but never discount the government’s ability to take a bad idea and make it worse. WE DON’T HAVE THE CASH TO PAY OFF THESE LOANS! They are printing money out of thin air to pay off the loans and borrow the money for a longer period! If you did that you’d be arrested for counterfeiting! Does that help explain why you are hearing all this talk about the U.S. dollar no longer being the world’s reserve currency? By printing more supply of money without the demand for it we dilute the value of the currency and that’s why counterfeiting is illegal. There are two blog posts we did last year that explain this in more detail including an explanation of inflation and commodity impacts. They are:

Some Inconvenient Truths can be Backed Up by Real Math and Science Parts 1 and 2

They can be found at:

and

We hope this helps answer some of the questions surrounding the market’s behavior these days. Call or e-mail us with any others!

Thanks for reading and please stay tuned…