Archive Category: Andrew Zatlin's Superforecast Trader Archive

Hello, and welcome to your Thursday Superforecast Trader update! Matt Clark is taking some well-earned vacation time to visit with his family in Kansas this week, so this will be a brief one… In our last update this Tuesday, I explained how jobless claims data can often be distorted in its interpretation — with things like seasonal adjustments serving to skew claims higher or lower than they should be.

45,000. In each of the last three weeks, jobless claims have exceeded expectations — leading to 45,000 more Americans losing their jobs than we might have expected. That’s a big number. And this new data clearly has some investors worried…

Winter storms that covered a majority of the country played a major role in weekly jobless claims. The latest figures out today show a significant spike in the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits.

Hello and welcome back to Superforecast Trader! This week, we’ve got a little “good news/bad news,” so I’ll start with the bad… Namely; the fact that we’ve had a massive, historic winter storm impacting more than 240 million Americans across 40 different states. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks who are still struggling with massive snowfall, power outages and worse.

Welcome to the Thursday wrap-up of Superforecast Trader! Just a day after the Federal Reserve decided to hold rates steady, citing a stabilizing labor market and inflation expectations that remain in check, weekly jobless claims data appear to back up that assessment.