And so the gaming continues: Initial Claims miss expectations of a 383K print, coming at 387K, a number which next week will be revised to 390K. This is the 7th miss in a row, and 23rd miss of the past 26 weeks. It is also the highest 4 week average since December. But the mainstream media has its soundbite: "initial claims decline by 2,000" because, lo and behold, last week's 386K print was revised to 389K. We have discussed this topic to death: little to add here. The ceremonial scripting by the BLS continues full bore. The only real data point in today's release: those collecting extended claims continue to hit the 99-week cliff, as 42K more drop off Komrade Samov's free lunch dole. Finally, judging by the somewhat muted positive market response to this latest piece of horrible economic news, the data was bad but not bad enough: we need a 400K+ print for the ES to get back to 1,400 it appears.
Full summary of misses in the last 6 months:
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