Monday's Market Minute: Closing Out The Month

Let’s take a market minute to look at what’s on the minds of traders and investors, and at the top of the list in terms of what could move markets this week. Before we talk about what’s to come, keep an eye on U.S. indices; they remain in a well-defined trend up, trading at or into new all-time highs headed into the end of last week. We have the Russell 2000 Reconstitution this week; the Russell has been lagging behind the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, and the Dow – possibly this will be the shot in the arm it needs. Crude oil (/CL) has also been trending up and should be closely watched as Gasoline Futures (/RB) led higher into the end of the week; this has the bulls looking for the move up to continue.

In terms of economic data, the focus will primarily be on the jobs reports due out, but we also have some housing numbers, and some manufacturing data Thursday. In terms of the jobs reports, the ADP report is Wednesday, weekly Jobless Claims, and the Challenger Job Cut report come out Thursday, and Friday, we get Non-Farm Payrolls and the monthly labor data. The monthly number will be especially closely watched after two months in a row of job growth that, for the most part, disappointed. For those watching the trend up in crude mentioned above, keep an eye on comments from the OPEC+ meeting this week, weekly inventories, and the U.S. Dollar. All that combined with month-end and quarter-end price activity, as oftentimes you see jockeying for position into the end of the quarter, sets us up for an interesting week!

Image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay