Weak Jobs Report Not Weak Enough For Stocks – Schiff Report
The Peter Schiff Show Podcast
Peter Schiff
4.6 • 5.9K Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
* It really was a brutal week on Wall Street, led by the tech-heavy NASDAQ, which is down about 5-1/2% on the week; 3% of that alone came today, now down about 17% from its high
* Not officially in a bear market yet, but getting there
* The vast majority of NASDAQ stocks are in bear markets, in fact, many of those stocks are down 40 or 50% or more - a number of those stocks down 40 or 50% today alone
* The Russell 2000 is already in a bear market; it's down 24%
* Dow Transports also down 25%, and transports were actually up this week
* The S&P and the Dow are only down about 12% - in correction but not quite a bear market, but remember, all bear markets begin as corrections, and I think this is just the early stage of a bear market
* You can contrast that with what's going on with gold; gold was up 5% on the week. It added $18 today alone to close above 1170, in fact the price of gold has risen by $120/ounce since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in December
* The dollar also had a bad week, despite rising somewhat today on the jobs numbers, the dollar index had its worst weekly decline since 2009
* So now, the opposite of what everybody expected has happened
* Everybody thought the stock market would go up, because the rate hike was proof that the economy was stronger; instead the stock market has tanked, in fact the beginning of January was Wall Street's worst start to the year in history
* In contrast, the expectation was that rising interest rates would help the dollar; instead the dollar has actually declined
* Higher interest rates were expected to be bearish for gold; instead it was the catalyst for a huge rally in the price of gold
* The weaker than expected jobs report was assumed to be the reason for today's stock market carnage, because we only created 151,000 non-farm payroll jobs and the Street was looking for 188,000 jobs
* The reality is not that the report was weak, it is that it was not weak enough
* The only thing that could have saved this market would have been a horrible jobs report - a jobs report so bad that an interest rate hike would be clearly off the table
* Instead, this jobs report could indicate that the Fed is more likely to raise rates as a result of the numbers
* That is why the market went down
* No one wants to admit that the only thing holding up this market is the Fed, so they pretend that the market is disappointed by the weakness of the report
* Jobs have nothing to do with it - this market has always been about one thing - the Fed and cheap money
* Now it hangs on weather the Fed will raise rates again
* I believe the next thing the Fed is going to do is to cut interest rates
* I think they might even go negative and they going to launch QE4
* The markets have not figured this out yet
* Even the Atlanta Fed, whose first estimate of Q1 GDP at just 1.2% (I think this is an over-estimation; I think the Q4 .7% will be downwardly revised) saw this apparently strong jobs report they increased their Q1 GDP estimate by a full percentage point to 2.2%
* If the Atlanta Fed thought the jobs report was so strong, why are the reporters assigning blame to the jobs report for the sell-off
* If you look beneath the headline number of the miss, on the number of non-farm payrolls, you'll find out what the markets were so worried about:
* 1) The official unemployment rate moved down to 4.9% - that's the first time we've had a 4 handle on the unemployment rate since Obama has been President
* In fact, he did not waste much time calling a press conference proclaiming the success of his administration and declaring that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world; quite ironic because I thin we are already in recession
Our Sponsors: * Check out Chilipad and use my code sleep.me/GOLD for a great deal: https://sleep.me * Check out DBJourney and use my code Schiff15 for a great deal: https://dbjourney.com * Check out Fast Growing Trees and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://www.fast-growing-trees.com * Check out Plaud AI and use my code GOLD for a great deal: https://plaud.ai * Check out Quince and use my code quince.com/gold for a great deal: https://www.quince.com * Check out TruDiagnostic and use my code GOLD20 for a great deal: https://www.trudiagnostic.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Peter Schiff, and I'm recording this on Friday, February 5, 2016, and it really |
| 0:07.4 | was a brutal week on Wall Street led by the tech heavy Nasdaq, which is down about 5.5% |
| 0:14.8 | on the week. |
| 0:15.8 | 3% of that came today alone. |
| 0:17.9 | The Nasdaq was down 145 points. |
| 0:20.4 | That is the biggest one-day drop this year for the Nasdaq, which by the way is now down |
| 0:25.0 | just under 17% from its high, not officially in a bear market yet, but getting there. |
| 0:31.8 | Although the vast majority of Nasdaq stocks are in bear markets, and in fact, many of those |
| 0:37.8 | stocks are down 40 or 50% or more, in fact, there are a number of Nasdaq stocks that were |
| 0:42.8 | down 40 or 50% today alone. |
| 0:46.5 | The Russell 2000 is already in a bear market. |
| 0:49.6 | It's down 24% from its high. |
| 0:52.3 | Now, transports also down 25% from their high, and the transports were actually up this |
| 0:57.4 | week. |
| 0:58.4 | That's how beaten up that index has been. |
| 1:00.6 | But the S&P and the Dow are only down about 12% in a correction, but not quite a bear |
| 1:07.2 | market. |
| 1:08.2 | Although, remember, all bear markets begin as corrections, and I think this is just the |
| 1:12.0 | early stage of a bear market. |
| 1:14.0 | It just won't be officially confirmed until we're down 20%. |
| 1:18.3 | You can contrast that to what's been going on with gold. |
| 1:21.9 | Gold was up 5% on the week. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Peter Schiff, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Peter Schiff and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

