Ahead of Wall Street - May 1, 2012 - Ahead of Wall Street
May 01 2012 - 4:23AM
Zacks
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The market managed to recoup its April losses in the last couple
of weeks to finish the month essentially flat. As a result, it is
starting May with the impressive gains from the October lows
essentially intact. That said, I would expect stocks to remain in a
tentative mood ahead of the all-important April Jobs Report on
Friday.
We do have a heavy schedule of reports on deck for release a
little later today, with the April Manufacturing ISM survey as the
most significant one. Regional manufacturing surveys in the lead-up
to today’s ISM reading have been showing some loss of momentum in
the industrial sector, with Monday’s Chicago PMI coming up short as
did the Empire State and Philly Fed surveys earlier. The headline
ISM level is expected to come down from March’s 53.4 level, but it
will be interesting to see the employment component given the
recent strength in manufacturing jobs.
Beyond today’s spotlight on the manufacturing sector, the focus
the rest of this week will be the labor market, with the April
non-farm payroll report coming out Friday morning. The expectation
is for a roughly 165K reading for total gains and a bit higher
number for private-sector jobs.
Most of the labor market indicators have been showing softness
since the negative jobs surprise last month, hurting the emerging
narrative of a labor market turnaround. The Friday reading will
confirm whether the March miss was one-off event due to seasonal
factors or the start of a new round of slowdown along the lines of
what we saw around this time in the last two years. I believe it’s
the former, but we will find out for sure only on Friday
morning.
Of this morning’s very busy earnings schedule,
Pfizer (PFE) and Archer Daniels
Midland (ADM) managed to eke out earnings beats on
modestly lower than expected revenues. Avon
Products (AVP) came short of earnings and revenue
expectations. We have Motorola Mobility (MMI) and
CBS Corp. (CBS) reporting after the close
today.
Sheraz Mian
Director of Research
ARCHER DANIELS (ADM): Free Stock Analysis Report
AVON PRODS INC (AVP): Free Stock Analysis Report
CBS CORP (CBS): Free Stock Analysis Report
MOTOROLA MOBLTY (MMI): Free Stock Analysis Report
PFIZER INC (PFE): Free Stock Analysis Report
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