The Market On Wednesday

Good morning. It is 51 degrees and cloudy verging on raining here in Upstate NY. It's a little soggy out there. We had one of those nights where dinner kept getting pushed back and time was flying by. So by around 9 it's too late to cook and we relied on an old stand by, popcorn. Yes for dinner last night I had popcorn. I must admit this is not the first time that has happened, and I know you've done it too. Be honest. We jazz it up a bit with olive oil and Parmasian cheese. It's one of those high carb poofy meals and for some reason I slept just fine.

At 8:15 a.m. futures are slightly down, the dollar is up against major world currencies, and the price of oil is down per barrel. The market is poised to open lower and mess up our present four year high in the DOW.

Investors are seeing better than expected first quarter reports from all of the corporate components of the various indexes. But that is not enough...

As we know Europe is country by country falling into recession with a fear that powerhouse Germany is about to do the same. That would be telling as Germany is a major economic power.

Another big concern is the US job market which in recent months has gone even flatter than its preceding flatness. Clearly we might be in better shape than Greece where unemployment is rampant at around 22%. Since we cook the books on unemployment percents we must also grant Greece the same right and figure their unemployment is higher as well.

Somehow through all of the mess, corporations are on a roll and the job creators have decided that they don't need to create crap. Apparently the wealthy buy enough goods to prop it all up, the middle class and poor blokes can go jump in a life raft that is if you are fortunate enough to own one. Otherwise you can just jump in a lake and pray to the job creators.

CNN: Stocks: Eyes on jobs

On tap for the morning includes new data on factory orders and the labor market, as well as a bevy of corporate earnings reports.


Fears about a so-called hard landing in China, a stalled U.S. recovery and a flare-up in Europe's debt crisis have been weighing on investors in recent weeks...


Unemployment across the 27-nation European Union remained at 10.2% in March...


...13 European nations struggling with double digit unemployment, led by a 24.1% rate in Spain and 21.7% in Greece.