1040 Good Buddy

Roger, Roger. Over, Under. Did I catch a 9-er in there?

Despite just about every economic tragedy you can imagine just short of outright actual contraction, the S&P managed to bounce right off of the 1040 floor yesterday and the Dow doggie paddled above the 10,000 mark once again. Very resilient and I'm starting to think its going to take a very strong (negatively so) economic report to push lower the indices lower. Now, that's very possible given that weekly unemployment claims and a revised GDP number are due out later this morning and tomorrow respectively; however, expectations for these reports are rather low already, so a downside suprise isn't quite as devestating. Also true, the fact we wont hear from corporate America about its positive profitability for another 6 weeks does create a possible vacuum for fear and poor econ reports, but have heart - for the time being 1040 appears to be very friendly to the markets.

(update: jobless claims came in slightly above 470,000 - still negative but breaking the upward trend and not breaching the 500,000 level; of more concern would be recent housing reports regarding INCREASES in mortgage delinquincies. Similar to manufacturing and its recent report of actual CONTRACTION - one time does not a trend make, but these are the things that have led Nouriel Roubini, whom this blog follows very closely, to increase the chances of a double dip to 40%).