JOLTS, Countdown to ‘Liberation Day’

Good morning contrarians! Welcome to the Daily Contrarian, our morning look at events likely to move markets. It is Tuesday, April 1. Happy April Fool’s Day! Today’s Stocks On The Contrarian Radar©️ segment features Asian automakers and starts at the bottom of this page.

State of Play

Stocks staged a major late day rally yesterday, closing roughly unchanged after being down multiple percent earlier in the session. No clear catalyst for the reversal. Perhaps people read yesterday’s briefing and realized all this tariff stuff isn’t worth panicking over. As we eye our board of indicators for signs of direction at 0700 all is quiet with the exception of the bond market:

• Bonds continue to see bids, with the 10-year yield dropping another 8 basis points to 4.16% (yields move inversely to prices);

• Stock index futures are pointing marginally lower, with major US indexes looking at a drop of about 0.3% or so;

• Cryptos are showing a few signs of life with Bitcoin up 2.5% to trade north of $84,000 again;

• Commodities are flat. WTI crude oil is at a multi-week high of $71.50/barrel, but not moving. Copper is unchanged;

Today’s Known Events

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, is out at 1000 ET. The expectation is for 7.73 million job openings, effectively identical to the 7.74 million recorded last month. This is February’s data we’re getting, so a little dated. The quits levels were about 3.2 million in the last reading, corresponding to 2.1% of the workforce, an increase over the previous month. There unfortunately isn’t an economist estimate for that.

Construction spending is also out at 1000. Economists expect an increase of 0.2% month-over-month after declining 0.2% the previous month.

The Bottom Line