Less Bad to the Rescue!

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The July jobs report came out, and since it's less bad than the worst estimates, the /ES flipped higher nearly twenty points in the span of just a few minutes. Here's the unemployment percentage through July, with last month's peak highlighted with an arrow:

0807-jobs

Psychologically, a couple of "phew!" events are going on for most folks: first, the psychologically-troubling double-digit unemployment rate has been averted so far; and second, a graph like this has the sort of "termination to exponential growth" which make the end of a recession seem plausible.

What the market does with the news over the course of the entire day is more interesting to me than what it's done with it before we even open. But, for now, the bulls have another arrow in their quiver.