Trader Scott
The March jobs number came out and was well below expectations. It showed there was a major hiring drought, but do not fear. The excuses flooded in as to why we saw a drying up of employment, and the built in excuse is always – the weather. Apparently this type of “climate change” is somehow shocking to Wall Street – but in the summer, it’s hot, and in the winter, it’s cold. Well gee! And in the summer, there are storms, and in the winter, there are storms. Oh wow! They do not teach this in the Yale Economics Department. It’s time they do. Because the newbie Wall Street economists then are forced to take a crash course in meteorology to explain away why the economy sucks. But notice when some “economic statistic” comes out a little better than expected, never once has weather been cited as a factor – never once.
So when the jobs number came out “surprisingly” bad, as usual the Wall Street “economists” blamed it on winter weather….in winter. When their econometric models fail, which is 99.9% of the time, it’s great to have such a handy reason to be used in order to obfuscate why they are idiots. Because, as is always the case with Wall Street economic meteorologists, they can always blame it on the weather. For example, Junior Meteorologist Elise Gould looked thru the cloudy jobs number and made it very simple for us to understand – there was a winter storm….in winter….as the lousy jobs data was due to “the early March winter storms….in winter” and a ” pullback after unusually mild weather in February”.
While Junior Winter Weather expert Jed Kolko said the chilly jobs number showed that: “weather-sensitive industries added little to job growth in March….in winter…. But non-weather-sensitive payrolls fell, too.” Huh Jed? Wait what? Is this economics or weather? What?
And Senior Winter Weather Expert Joseph Shapiro gave a partly sunny outlook: “snow and cold weather….in winter…., in many parts of the country….in winter…., clearly took a toll on the construction sector. January and February were abnormally warm, so they were pumped up, and you had some payback in March exacerbated by the harsh winter weather“….in winter.
But once again, Chief Meteorologist and Senior Climate Change Expert Joseph A. Lavorgna, proved why he is the single most respected meteorologist on Wall Street. Because before the jobs number was even released, he had studied the weather patterns, thus was warning why a consensus miss would not mean a hiring freeze was imminent. And yes, you guessed correctly – it would be because of the harsh winter weather………………………………….in winter: “Employment is always a focus, but my guess is it’s going to be soft, relative to trend because of the weather, and nobody’s going to care because it’s a weather story if it’s weak.”
So we can now see why Wall Street economic meteorologists continue struggling to always maintain a sunny permabull outlook. However, knowing they are members of probably the most overpaid “profession” in the world certainly eases the burden. But it’s also nice to know that if they lose their jobs, NOAA’s Climate Change Center is always looking to hire totally incompetent morons.
Scoot. I have a question slightly off topic. Do you think is a good idea to close out trades, a day or two and stay out of the market before a long weekend for the market?
Excellent question again, and tough to answer. It has to do with risk, not profits, and also the whole time frame confusion thing. It’s going to take some explaining to hopefully get something coherent and implementable. This one definitely needs a video. So good, 2 videos on the way.