The Market On Friday

Good morning. It is 62 degrees and sunny here in Upstate NY. Its one of those pivotal weekends as we shift to the feel of Autumn, the return of students and school buses, our preparation for the colder weather, and our sad loss of the intensity of Summer. The mindset changes a bit. Around here its been a glorious Summer, other parts of the country had extreme drought and harsh temperatures. Excepting earthquakes and hurricanes, its truly been an outstanding Summer.

At 8:00 a.m. futures are moderately down, the dollar is mixed, and oil is down.

Investors are focused on the soon the be released government report on jobs in August.

I will go out on a short and easily accessible limb here and say it will not be what is needed. We need a report that says businesses added 500,000 jobs. People are predicting the range will be 50,000 to 100,000. That will amount to being a hairline scratch in the overall unemployment numbers.

The question that is more salient to people is how will Wall Street respond to the misery. Will they throw in the sponge, or after furiously parsing the numbers for any signs of life somewhere, keep the indexes neutral. Regardless of the numbers, some big shot out there already has a spin that this data proves we are headed in the right direction. Severe skepticism on our part about that spin is mandatory.

CNN: Stocks: Investors bracing for jobs

Friday is all about jobs, with the government's report due out at 8:30 a.m. ET.