April 6, 2020 - Market Update

In Friday’s economic news, the markets woke up to a very discouraging jobs report which showed payrolls coming in at negative 701K versus a survey of negative 101K.  The unemployment rate jumped from 3.5% to 4.4%, versus an estimate of 3.8%. The labor participation rate dropped to 62.7 versus a prior month’s report of 63.4. This was the worse month for job losses since the 2008 crisis.  It is important to note that this report is based on March data and does not reflect the millions of unemployment-insurance claims that people have filed in the last two weeks. In other news, the March ISM non-manufacturing index was released and had the worse reading since the Great Recession.

On Friday, the major stock indexes fell as the coronavirus ended a record U.S. job growth streak of 113 months, providing light that the economy may be in a recession.  The Dow dropped 360 points to 21,052, the S&P was down 38 points to 2,488, and the Nasdaq fell 114 points to 7,373. However, this morning stocks are looking to open sharply higher as some of the virus tolls in major impacted areas showed signs of slowing over the weekend. The Dow is at +780, the S&P at +94, and the Nasdaq at +292.

Girl Scouts sell about 200 million boxes of cookies/year. At $5/box, that’s $1 billion in sales, more than the annual US sales of Oreos, the best-selling US cookie. Thin Mints are the favorite of 24% of Americans. Samoas/Caramel deLites are next at 16%, while Tagalongs/Peanut Butter Patties are third at 10%. The remaining eight flavors are collectively favored by 29% of the population; 21% have no opinion.