Jittery Investors Await April Jobs Report

The S&P index, the market’s single-most comprehensive yardstick, will be keenly watched next week. Analysts believe that it could signal the beginning of the market’s change from becoming a buying market to a selling market. The bullish feeling amongst analysts stems from, the market breaching the 1,400 mark barrier for the first time since early April.

Brian Lazorishak, senior quantitative analyst and portfolio manager at Chase Investment Counsel in Charlottesville, Virginia, while agreeing that a close above 1,400 was an encouraging indicator but that its reaching a recent high of almost 1,422 was a more important achievement technically.  “That’s what we’re looking for on the upside as confirmation there’s room to move higher,” Lazorishak said, adding hopefully, that the growth indicated that pre-recession heights could be reached.

The S&P 500, showed growth in the preceding months, 4.4 percent in January, almost an identical margin in February, 3.1 percent in March, but it is showing a decline by 0.4 percent so far in April.

Larry McMillan, president of options research firm McMillan Analysis Corp said in a report, “The sideways action we have seen over the past few weeks was enough to alleviate any overbought conditions that existed in the market a month ago. Thus, the market has the potential for another leg higher in this longer term uptrend, one that began early October 2011.”

Analyst believe that the April jobs report, expected next Friday could be one of the more crucial pieces of economic data released this year. A positive report would show the disappointing March report as an aberration and bad news could have a domino effect, hurting the entire economic sphere.

The March jobs report had shown that the jobs growth had slowed down to its slowest since October. The ADP Employment Report will be released on Wednesday and the weekly jobless claims data a day after the Employment report. They will shed light on whether the labor market is losing or gaining momentum.

In addition to the above, investors will also scan the manufacturing data and car sales to determine which way the economy is turning.

Many companies are expected to report their earnings next week and they too will be in focus, as corporate earnings reported so far, for the first-quarter 2012, belied expectations and were surprisingly higher than expected.

Moreover, in a meeting that could redefine banking regulations, Jamie Dimon, chief-executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co, has organized a meeting of chief executives of major banks with Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo, to discuss banks regulatory concerns, especially the government’s proposal to limit bank’s exposure to other firms and governments.