Trader Talk

Published: Thursday, 5 Nov 2009 | 4:04 PM ET

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Friday: all about the unemployment rate. That's a bit different than usual, since traders typically focus more on job creation and destruction—the nonfarm payroll report—rather than the unemployment rate.

But this time, unemployment is the attention-grabber, because consensus calls for it to go to 9.9 percent for October, up from 9.8 percent in September.

The problem: any figure of 10.0 or higher is a Bad Headline—a sure-fire attention grabber in the next day's papers.

There's unanimous agreement this will eventually happen, but with the Dems losing two gubernatorial races this week, expect political elbows to be flying if that number hits 10.0 or higher.

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• The Dow 30 in Real Time
• The CNBC Stock Blog
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