Notes from the Matrix - April Download Pt I

I know its a little late but it is about that time to download thoughts that have been swirling in my head (usually typed into my phone) for the month of APRIL. As I mentioned in the past, I've noticed a not so subtle shift in my investing habits and it has been a huge thirst for data! I think that in periods like this where the direction of the economy, country and the world are not so clear cut, everyone saturates the internet, tv, and newspapers with there different view points of how it will all play out. For me this amounts to a lot of noise. And noise for a MACROVALUEQUANT (not sure what this means, run a quick search for previous posts) can be good and bad, but mainly its time consuming. Its time consuming because I think investing and being wrong about these events may be worse than not investing at all. This gets us back to that VALUE concept and my need to want to have conviction that I am entering into an investment at a point where there is significant value to be gained.

But enough of my ramblings and onto the themes and concepts that I've dialed into the most this month, starting with the oldest dated notes:

Economic Indicators ~ (Dec '09) Monthly Job Numbers

The Labor Department's monthly jobs numbers are out and everyone on Wall Street and in the federal government have been waiting on these figures. FYI, for us regular folks in the city and in the burbs these numbers that came out this week are a summary of the previous month ...so the numbers that were announced this month are DECEMBER's unemployment numbers. The government also takes the time to go back and revise the number they've reported for the previous months. The numbers continue to paint a mixed bag with more negatives than positives at this point. I've highlighted the negatives in RED and the positives in GREEN.

December’s Unemployment Numbers are out. Here are the points based on numbers from the different surveys:

- The actual unemployment job loss number is – 85K for December. This is not what was expected because the estimated number from experts was to see a loss of roughly -10K or even a slightly positive number. So this number was worse than expected.

- The Household Survey has the number of unemployed persons at 15.3 million and the unemployment rate at 10%. Here is the breakdown among working groups (amazing when you see the actual numbers):

• Adult men (10.2 percent),
• Adult women (8.2 percent),
• Teenagers (27.1 percent),
• Whites (9.0 percent),
• Blacks (16.2 percent),
• Hispanics (12.9 percent),
• Asians (8.4 percent)

- The number of long-term unemployed (longer than 27 weeks) continues to rise.

- The number of people counted in the labor force is declining. This is strange because the stock market & GDP (economy) has been increasing. This is almost a sure sign that the unemployment rate will be rising this year to likely 10.5 to 11%. The experts say this is because the labor force will increase (not decrease) as the economy gets better and when those (dropped out) people are back and looking, they will be counted and the unemployment rates will increase.
- The number of part time, marginally looking, and now discouraged workers increased.

- The areas where jobs are increasing are Healthcare and Temporary help services. Temp employment has risen by 166,000. This is a good sign as companies usually bring temp and contract jobs back first.

Here are the revisions to October and November:

October - revised from -110K down to -127K
December - revised from -11K up to +4K

I stumbled onto the actual site where the Labor Department releases its employment numbers and that site will be posted in my favorites.