The Market On Monday

  Good morning. It is 56 degrees, soggy from a few days in a row of rain, and mostly cloudy here in Upstate NY. Like it or not we are into October and the signs of Fall continue their progress. The leaves are slowly turning, a few trees are already bare, and the temperatures and humidity have subsided. I had a working weekend. My project right now is trying to straighten up a neighbor's leaning garage. The garage has tilted due to termite damage and some wood rot. We hired a structural engineer who laid out a formula for the project and right now it's too early to tell if anything is happening. The idea is to shift the building 1/4 of an inch per day. I will update as I proceed. I'm trying to muster some luck here too, anything to help.

  At 8:15 a.m. futures are moderately higher, the dollar is up against major world currencies, and the price of oil is down. With this configuration it would seem that the market in general will advance at the opening but lots of equities will not.

  Investors are pleased to hear news out of the eurozone with Spain passing a few hurdles on its way to more solvency. And by the way if you think unemployment is bad here, check out the official 11.4% rate in the eurozone. One can assume that the eurozone "official" rate is similar to ours with many more people off the roles and hurting. We all know this to be true, people do well with meaningful steady employment of some kind even if it's a compelling force to make art, or learn about spirituality, or to learn how to be happy.

  Friday is a very telling day for Obama and the election process along with being salient to the state of our economy. On Friday the government releases numbers on job creation in September. Here's my prediction - the number is going to blow. The number will be miserable, yet Obama will escape the damage.

CNN: Stocks: A positive fourth quarter start

...Spain passed two major hurdles last week when it proposed its 2013 budget and results from bank stress tests were in line with expectations.

(The eurozone) unemployment rate coming in at a record high of 11.4% in August...