The Only Good News? Europe Is Closed
By: Bob Pisani | CNBC "On-Air Stocks" Editor
Shoot me now: the only good news this morning is that Europe is closed. Another lousy day over there, with many markets down 2 to 3 percent. In recent days, the U.S. markets have usually come off their lows after Europe closed at about 11:30am ET.
I know the data has been lousy, but retail sales for July, out on Thursday, may be a modest bright spot.
There's been great weather in July, which is a clearance month, and by all accounts retailers have been aggressive with discounts.
Still, the market is taking no prisoners. Look at Coach , with a great report, same store sales up over 10 percent, down 6 percent, but margins were just a tad light. In case you're wondering, COH's margins are the envy of everyone: 71.8 percent. Now that's a margin!
Still, you can't avoid the technical damage done, particularly to industrials, where there are double-digit declines in the past few weeks in big names like...these of course are big names associated with global growth: Parker Hannifin , General Electric* , Ingersoll Rand , Deere are all now down 15 to 28 percent from their April-May highs.
One strange data point: VIX is down today...QE3 quantitative easing talk may be sitting on volatility to some degree.
With lousy data on GDP on Friday, ISM on Monday, and Personal Spending today, and 7 straight days of decline in the stock markets, it's easy to be pretty gloomy. Expecations are low for nonfarm payrolls, with estimates of about 80,000 new jobs but whisper numbers are well below 50,000. Those numbers have fluctuated wildly in the past months, but the trajectory has been steadily down: from 235,000 in February to 18,000 in June.
* General Electric maintains a minority ownership of NBCUniversal, which is CNBC's corporate parent.
_____________________________
Bookmark CNBC Data Pages:
_____________________________
Want updates whenever a Trader Talk blog is filed? Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/BobPisani.
Questions? Comments? tradertalk@cnbc.com
