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Wall Street had a bloody week entering into 2008 with Dow down by more than 500 points. There was simply no place to hide. Everything from growth stocks to value stocks, from big caps to small caps was being sold off. The internals were extremely negative as evidenced by more than 9 to 1 decline vs. advance volumes on both NYSE and Nasdaq. The disappointing non-farm payroll report for December was cited as the main trigger for the broad sell off. The number came at 18K, well below consensus of 70K. If it were not the 31K newly created government positions, the number would be negative. In addition, the unemployment rate jumped to 5%, also higher than expectation. Now we had both a weak manufacturing report and a weak job report, the chance of an imminent recession was certainly increased. In fact, I suspect many sectors including financials, homebuilding and semiconductors were already in recession, if not depression mode. However, one also needs to remember that economic cycle is not always in sync with stock market performance. With stocks trading at discount compared to other asset groups, the market should do fine even if the economy is going to have a brief recession. Treasury bonds continued to rally following the weak job reports while oil price pulled back a little after touching $100 yesterday. For next week, we are going to have the annual Consumer Electronics show. Fed Chairman Bernanke is scheduled to speak on economic outlook on Thursday. Many chain retailers are also going to release their monthly same-store sales data. So get ready for another busy week!
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