Archive Category: Andrew Zatlin's Superforecast Trader Archive

Welcome to your Thursday edition of Superforecast Trader! We’ve got another quick one for you today, since the partial government shutdown has shut out any data coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The last piece of data related to weekly jobless claims was released on September 25, when the number of claims fell to its lowest level since mid-July (218,000 for the week prior).

Hello, and welcome to Superforecast Trader! This week’s ongoing government shutdown means we won’t see any new official data released from the US government. That’s especially challenging because we’ve also got a Federal Reserve meeting coming up next week, during which Jerome Powell and company were expected to come to a consensus on whether to cut rates for October.

Welcome to your Thursday edition of Superforecast Trader! This one will be brief on my part (Matt will join us in a moment to discuss market performance). That’s because the federal government is in a partial shutdown after Congress could not agree on a funding measure past the end of the fiscal year.

Never underestimate the resilience of American entrepreneurs, businesses and the American economy at large… That’s a lesson some forecasters learned all over again last week — when jobless claims dipped substantially after a sustained trend towards higher unemployment. This week we can expect to see a slight rebound in claims, along with ongoing turmoil in D.C. (more on that from the illustrious Mr. Clark below). But first, I want to dive into another surprisingly bullish factor driving today’s job market:

Hello again! Given the substantial volatility we witnessed as the market digested both yesterday’s Fed decision and this morning’s jobless claims, we exited the first half of our trade shortly after market open to mitigate our risk. I’m pleased to report the second half of our current trade is now performing better than the first half.