<p>I hate the QEs. QEs deaden intraday trading volatility…and I think it keeps some investors and traders away because they know the market has an artificial aspect to it. Investors and traders don’t trust the prices. </p>
<p>I know that people are getting rich because the market has been rising…and the value of interest rate related issues have risen because of government involvement in the market…
But there are fewer players…</p>
<p>This year is up, up, up… For equities…and dull, dull, dull. Actually…all asset classes are seeing very low volumes…and from what I see…low volatility.</p>
<p>"Though i can turn my attention from the stock market to my second vice, fantasy baseball…</p>
<p>The amusement park that’s hiring is regional and not a big name. It’s mostly locals and there isn’t any major theme like Hershey’s or Disney. We’ve only been there a few times. A company that I worked for back in the 1980s had a company outing there. It had around 100K employees so it was a massive operation. Your family got scheduled for a particular day and it was like assembly line processing for food.</p>
<p>Update on PVX. The buyout price was about $12/share but it was volatile for a while. I did some trading on the volatility and bought the last dip down to around $11.25 and then held it into the buyout. The ADR for Pembina (buyer) is PBA. It was up over 3% this week and has a current dividend yield of about 5.25% and it pays dividends monthly. I plan to hang onto Pembina - there’s quite nice synergy in the now-combined company.</p>
<p>It also depends on the details. I want to see the private vs public breakdown. The ADP report pointed to higher private payroll increases. The Challenger/Gray report yesterday was also good on private payrolls (they report mass layoffs).</p>
<p>Calls were selling for next to nothing. I had a look and saw nothing there. I think that making money selling calls in PVX was not a worthwhile endeavor. The options prices have been piddly since I started watching options in the company.</p>
<p>“One bit of good news is that public sector job losses are finally slowing. The government has been bleeding jobs since the middle of 2010, but recently those layoffs have started to wind down. The government cut just 1,000 jobs in March, while private businesses – which have steadily been hiring for two years straight – added 121,000 jobs.”</p>
<p>Hmmmm…that is tepid private sector job growth…</p>
<p>The explanation that I read in the news is that the January and February hires were due to abnormal warmer weather - consumers were out spending when they normally would have done that spending in March onwards. So Bernanke might have been right when he said that the job growth was above what it should be given what he’s seeing in the economic numbers.</p>
<p>The US dollar took a small hit and is slightly below 80 which is about where it has been for a few weeks +/- 2 units. Monday should be fun.</p>
<p>“One bit of good news is that public sector job losses are finally slowing.”</p>
<p>In CT there’s (serious) talk about starting teacher layoffs. Municipalities have been raising taxes and putting off long-term corrective action. If things are improving, it must be in places other than CT.</p>
<p>The worrisome issue in today’s jobs report IMHO is that the March numbers have made the 5-month trend decidedly downward. Maybe it’s just me, but 284K, 275K, 227K, xxxK, and 120K certain looks like a downward trend. Does anyone have the 3-month rolling for this period?</p>
<p>We will be cutting teachers here (school board races are heating up now and candidates are putting out there positions) but it’s due to declining enrollment. It will go back up someday but we don’t need as many teachers for the numbers coming in unless people started having many more babies five years ago.</p>
<p>The unemployment claims numbers continue to be decent but it could be due to people dropping off the benefit rolls. My daughter is still looking for work this summer and there are opportunities out there but I think that there are a lot of applicants for each position. She’s finding out how hard it is - she saw how much effort her brother needed to put in to get a job and he has almost an MSCS, great GPA, internships and a marketable degree.</p>