Market comments for Aug. 11th: Reality is about to catch up!

The Futures market shows the Dow down 126 in pre-market and the European markets down 1.5% or more. The reality of the recent economic data appears to be catching up to the reality of the hefty prices in the stock market and company valuations. The warning bell has been rung many times over th past 3 months and the rings are getting louder. Oil has broken below $80/barrel for the first time in a while. Then Yen is now down to under 85 to the dollar. Top line Revenue growth has not been the fuel of this past quarters earnings achievement. It has been cost cutting. But that too may be near its end as well as Unit Labor Costs are starting to rise, reported yesterday at +0.2%, and Productivity is starting to wane, reported yesterday at -0.9%. The Trade Balance for June has come in at -$49.9 Billion while it was expected to come in at -$43.0 Billion. The prior month it came in at $42.3 Billion. So this is definitely not going in a good direction. Gold is up over $10/ounce this morning. Exports were down -1.3% and Imports were up 3.0%.

We also expect Initial Jobless Claims to rise again this week. The number expected tomorrow is 465,000 compared to the previous week's expectation of 460,000 but actually came in at 479,000. And on Friday CPI and Core CPI numbers are reported, as well as Retail Sales and the Michigan Sentiment index. So much more news to come this week.

S&P Futures down -16 in premarket and the Nasdaq Futures are down -30. It looks like we may be finally merging reality with the value of the stock market. We are going lower.