The Peter Ships Show

Well, we finally got the October employment situation report and the US economy added 214,000 jobs during the month and the official unemployment rate dropped down to 5.8% from 5.9%.

Again, this is the lowest we've been since Obama took office 5.8% unemployment.

You would think with such low unemployment, President Obama would have received some kind of credit, right?

And the Democrats would not have lost the US Senate.

So clearly, if voters are unhappy, there's got to be something wrong with that 5.8% unemployment number.

Because it really doesn't tell the story.

First of all, the 214,000 jobs that were created was below Wall Street estimates.

We were looking for, or Wall Street was looking for, 240,000 jobs.

And I think there was a whisper number people were expecting the number to be higher than that.

So people were looking for a positive surprise.

So the fact that we not only didn't beat the number, but that we missed it at 214,000.

Initially, when the number came out, there was an immediate decline in the dollar, the Euro rallied, yen rallied, Canadian dollar rallied, Aussie dollar.

Then there was a dollar rally and the currency is sold off.

But by the end of the day, all the currencies were back up on their interday highs.

And the dollar went out near session lows.

The bigger move was in the gold market.

Gold prices finished up about $36 on the day.

So they were initially rallied in response to the jobs number.

And then after a pullback, the rally kicked into higher gear.

And in fact, the pullback was only very slight, not like the currencies, which really gave up all of their gains before rallying late in the day.

And I will talk about the markets a little bit later in the podcast.

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