Market comments for Oct. 21st

The data released this morning regarding Initial Jobless Claims showed that things stayed about the same with one notable exception, a correction on last week's data which was significantly worse than we were told last week. Initial Jobless Claims for week ending 10/16 were 452K, compared to expectations of 455K. However the prior week's data was revised upwards from 462K, which set the market on a downer, to an even worse revision to 475K. Continuing Claims came in at 4.441 Million Claims against a prior week's data of 4.445 Million which was revised upward from 4.399 Million. All in all the numbers have not changed much and we seem to be stuck here. But the markets have taken this as "good news" and so the market is rising again at the open. The Nasdaq, Dow and S&P are all up at the open. The Dow is up about 40 points while the Nasdaq is up about 10 points 5 minutes into trading.

The Philly Fed data is released later as is Leading indicators and I will update the data here.