Employment Number

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04032008/business/watch_the_markets_reaction_to_the_jobs_r_104851.htm?page=0

Very interesting piece in, of all places, the New York Post. I have no idea what the jobs number is going to do but I have been saying for awhile that the market desperately wants to go up. Maybe the number is hideous and we go down tomorrow. We shall see, but I tend to agree with Mr., it may not matter whether the number is good or bad, the market will still go up.

But let's get back to more immediate concerns. What happens if the payroll report this Friday is as bad or even worse, than Wall Street is expecting?

Oddly, it'll probably make investors happy. They'll have yet another reason in a long list of them to expect more interest-rate cuts from the beleaguered Federal Reserve. (Never mind that the six so far haven't done a hell of a lot of good.)

And what if the Labor Department's wishful thinking and clever manipulation actually works and Friday's number comes in stronger than expected - even if that only means fewer job losses?

Wall Street will probably still be happy.

After seeing the value of their stock portfolios shrink since last November, investors would love to see signs that the economy is improving.

I tend to be a conspiracy theorist anyway but I found this very interesting.

And in case you are wondering about that nearly 400-point gain in the Dow Jones industrial average here on Tuesday, it started with a very suspicious overnight rally in the Standard & Poor's 500 future contracts in Europe.

The Europe rally came after a sell-off in Japan.

Credit for the US rally was later given to the fact that Lehman Brothers was able to sell $4 billion in convertible securities.

But how could that be if stocks began their rally in Europe hours before Lehman said anything?

In case you are wondering, rigging S&P futures contracts is precisely how a Fed governor back in 1989 proposed fixing the stock market.

It probably had to do more with the start of the new quarter and the futures were the quickest way to start rebalancing a portfolio in preparation for the opening of the markets in the U.S. but hey, who knows.