One of the consequences of yesterday's endless Fed PR campaign was making it very clear that any good news going forward will be bad news for the market as it brings the T-word that shall not be named (wink wink Hilsenrath) that much closer. Which is why today's initial claims print [3], which just came in line with expectations at 340K, on consensus was looking for 345K, will hardly be a good thing for the market which now needs horrible economic data to assume that the taper will be delayed indefinitely. The last month's data was as always revised higher from 360K to 363K just so the media can claim an improvement of 23K for the week. Sure enough, futures not only did not ramp on the news, but are continuing to trade at the weak levels seen before the print. Continuing claims also came in better than the expected 3 million at 2.912 million, the first sub-3MM print since 2008. Hardly the bad enough news the market was looking for. And while the report in general was a big snooze, of note was the surge in California initial claims last week when the headline number soared, jumping to 15,060 due to "layoffs in the service industry." Will the weakness persist?
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