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Strategies & Market Trends : Technical analysis for shorts & longs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Johnny Canuck who wrote (42204)	3/27/2005 7:19:15 PM
From: Johnny Canuck	Respond to of 67756

One Surprise Investors May Love By JONATHAN FUERBRINGER ECONOMISTS, strategists, money managers and individual investors are always worried about being fooled by monthly jobs reports. Whether the forecasts are way too high or way too low, a miss usually means that stocks and bonds do the opposite of what was expected - and that means a lot of people lose money or an opportunity to make money. About 55 percent of the time, the forecast is off by as much as 50,000, plus or minus, according to Raymond Stone, economist at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, who has done a survey comparing job forecasts to actual initial results for the period from 1985 through this February. About 42 percent of the time, forecasts miss the mark by as much as 100,000 in either direction. "When this number comes out we're happy when we're within 25,000 to 35,000," Mr. Stone said. "That's a bull's-eye." So one might think that there would be even more to worry about this Friday, when the March employment numbers are due. It is April 1 - April Fools' Day. Well, based on history, March turns out to be a pretty good month for job creation when the results are announced on the day reserved for practical jokes. The last two April 1 reports, in 1994 and 1988, provided one big surprise and one small surprise, according to Mr. Stone's history of Wall Street forecasts of nonfarm payrolls and the initial report. But both were positive surprises. In 1994, the forecast was for 250,000 new jobs in March. The actual report showed 456,000. That figure, after Bureau of Labor Statistics revisions, is now 468,000. In 1988, the forecast was for 200,000 new jobs; the initial report was 262,000. Not a bull's-eye, but not bad for economists' work. The revised number is 276,000. Since 1960, the March employment data has been released on April 1 five times, according to the bureau. The average job creation for those five reports was 305,000, compared with an average of 154,000 for the other March reports. These averages are based on revised data. An April 1 announcement is also good when rated by the percentage increase in new jobs. In fact, it is twice as good. The average gain for the five March reports released on April 1 is 0.34 percent, versus 0.17 percent for the rest. For this April Fools' Day, the Wall Street forecast is for 218,000 new jobs, according to Bloomberg News. Data Check Another economic report to watch this week is the manufacturing gauge due on Friday from the Institute for Supply Management. It is expected to slip to 55 in March from 55.3 in February, according to Bloomberg News. A reading above 50 means that the sector is growing. On Wednesday, the government is expected to report that the economy grew at a 4 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2004, up from the previous estimate of 3.8 percent.