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Investors eye jobs data

Healthy employment growth could calm stocks’ nerves... but for how long?

If hiring picked up in March at a healthy pace, that could convince US stock investors this week that the economy’s recent setbacks caused by the weather were only temporary.

Friday’s monthly jobs report, the most widely-watched US economic indicator, is expected to show that nonfarm payrolls added 200,000 jobs in March, according to a Reuters poll of economists.

The rebound in hiring started last month despite the icy weather. Employers added 175,000 jobs to nonfarm payrolls in February after creating 129,000 new positions in January.

Wall Street will get more data on the broader economy this week as well. The Institute for Supply Management will release its national surveys for March on the manufacturing and services sectors, which are expected to show improvement from the previous month as well.

Rosier data could confirm for investors that recent weakness in economic data was caused by the winter’s harsh weather, suggesting the US economy’s uptrend is intact.

Improvement in the labour market, along with a pickup in the manufacturing and services sectors, could also bolster the case for the Federal Reserve’s scaling back of economic stimulus and put more focus on the timing of when the central bank will begin raising interest rates.

Job growth would be a plus for the market, which has suffered a bout of volatility as some of the most high-flying shares, including biotechs, have tumbled in the past week.

“We potentially could have a big positive surprise. The polar vortex is over, and I believe we could get a snapback in payroll numbers that is significantly better than expected,” said Doug Cote, chief market strategist at ING US Investment Management in New York.

Car sales for March will be released this week, along with ADP’s private-sector payrolls report for March and data on the US international trade deficit for February.

Investors are anxious to get a look at more trade data after China’s weak export numbers earlier this month underscored worries that the world’s second-largest economy is slowing.

The recent selloff in biotech and other recent big gainers could persist, strategists said, although so far it has not eroded the market’s bull run. Investors have been putting money into utilities and other sectors.

The Nasdaq biotechnology index fell seven per cent for the week. With just one trading day left in March, the Nasdaq biotech index was down about 13 per cent for the month at Friday’s close.

“There’s definitely been rotation out of tech in terms of asset flows, and energy and utilities have been growing,” said John Kosar, director of research with Asbury Research in Chicago.

For the week, the S&P utilities sector index rose 1.2 per cent and the S&P energy index climbed 2.5 per cent. In another potential headwind for the stock market, Moody’s put Russia’s government bond rating on review for a downgrade late on Friday.

More US companies could issue outlooks for the upcoming reporting period. So far, negative outlooks have surpassed positive ones from S&P 500 companies by a ratio of 6.9 to one for the first quarter, Thomson Reuters data showed.

That’s still lower than the ratio for the fourth quarter, but the high number of negative outlooks has driven profit estimates down for the first quarter.

S&P 500 first-quarter earnings growth is now expected to increase just 2.1 per cent, down sharply from a January 1 growth estimate of 7.6 per cent, the Thomson Reuters data showed.

Among companies that have already reported earnings, FedEx said severe winter conditions hurt results. FedEx cut its fiscal-year profit forecast.

Monsanto is due to report earnings this week, along with Micron Technology. But the earnings season won’t get under way until April 8, when Alcoa is scheduled to report results.

“You’ll start to have companies giving you an indication of how the quarter looked,” said Dan Veru, chief investment officer of Palisade Capital Management in Fort Lee, New Jersey, which oversees $4 billion.