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Is recession on the horizon?

9-7-07:  The August employment number shocked everyone on Wall St. A lot of analysts expected a drop in hiring last month, but very few expected it to be negative. The market is spooked as a result; the DOW is off about 200 points.  What’s also interesting from this latest job data is the revision from last month (July).  The government revised the employment figure from 128,000 to just 68,000 in July. That is a huge revision. Make us wonder where they are getting these data from. Well, that’s the government, can’t really trust their reports.   The question of the day, are we headed towards a recession?

The official definition of recession is two consecutive quarter of negative growth. While we agreed the job data is very concerning, we believed it is premature to say recession is on the horizon.  The job data should not be a surprise given the housing and financial industry has firing employees in recent months. A lot of the mortgage companies have shut down and construction has slowed.  In fact, the mortgage industry alone let go about 38,000 people in August. That was just in August.  Since there are many other sectors that are tied to housing and mortgages, we are expecting more pain in the short term.  Until this industry stabilized, we suspect more job cuts will follow. We’ll see more people on the streets in the coming months.

While this sector of the economy is not performing, other parts are doing quite well. For example, high tech is doing well. We expect the other industries to absorb some of the job losses. Perhaps even new industry will emerge such as property repossession.  Panic on Wall St. is nothing new. We’ve seen this before.

The feds will likely cut short term interest rate in the next weeks as this appears to be the next logical move. The move should decrease the cost of borrowing, enticing consumer to continue spending.  The decrease in short term rate will also drive the long term lower. This will certainly help out the homeowners with interest rates that is about to adjust.  In short, use these volatile times to look for deals.

Comments

What kind of deals are out there now?

Heyah!
Do you think there will be a big slide in the stock market any time soon? I've started selling most of my stocks on the basis that I don't like: 1. where the mortage is going 2. the dollar is very weak 3. inflation will creep up. This week was a pretty good and the DOW and NASDAQ are near their record.
Most of the banks have now gained back where they were when the selling started a month ago (ack I lost so much by selling too early)

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