For the week ended 6/8/2013, new jobless claims came in at 334K, a drop of 12,000 from the previous week’s reading of 346K. Continuing Claims did, however, inch up by 2,000, which could signal the beginning of a slowdown in hiring.
May retail sales surprised to the upside. For the month of May, retail sales were up 0.6 percent. Excluding autos and gasoline, sales were up 0.3 percent. Auto sales were up a very respectable 1.8 percent, marking the second monthly gain (auto sales rose 0.7 percent in April).
All-in-all this is not bad news for the economy. For the quarter, on a seasonally adjusted basis, sales were up 2.3 percent from the first quarter of 2013. Let’s just hope that it keeps going.
For the “market,” however, this may not, in fact, be good news, given that it adds fuel to the fire of the argument that the Fed should end its easy money policies.
