Unemployment Insurance Follow-Up

Here's the latest example of the insight one can gain from watching CNBC. The relevant part of the video begins about 2:30 into the clip. Note that Steve Liesman is CNBC's Senior Economics Reporter. Remember that. Senior. Economics. Reporter.

link to video


CNBC's Senior Economics Reporter is completely unaware of the existence of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) program. I can understand not being able to rattle off the latest EUC figures from memory, but he doesn't even know the program exists. Perhaps Obama's jobs program could include fact checkers for CNBC.

Here is the link to the latest weekly report. Look at the last row of the table. Granted, the number isn't emphasized in the report, but it is mentioned near the bottom of the text and in the table. I suppose it's unreasonable to expect a Senior Economics Reporter to read beyond the first paragraph.

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

Quote Of The Day: Unemployment Claims

Despite the improving trend of initial unemployment claims (still at very high levels), little attention has been paid to the escalating number of people who are exhausting their benefit and falling into the Emergency Compensation category. Although the government is likely to indefinitely extend these Emergency benefits, recipients aren't likely to be buying plasma TVs, new homes, cars, iPhones (just kidding - they'll still buy their iPhone), name-brand canned goods, teeth whitener, etc.


From ZeroHedge:

The number you won't hear mentioned anywhere in the Mainstream Media: 327,729. That is how many people shifted to Emergency Unemployment Compensation programs in the last week alone, hitting an all time record high of 4.2 million! So as everyone is focused on the benign picture of initial claims in the last week which was "only" 474,000, the number of people rolling off continuing benefits has exploded and is now a stunning 592,579 only in the last two week.

link to full post

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

Table Of The Day: CEO Pessimism

Despite analyst and market enthusiasm for better-than-expected earnings results, CEOs have become less confident more recently. Perhaps, they realize that cost cutting is getting more difficult while revenue continues to fall -- an ugly recipe. Their outlook also does not bode well for employment. The market had better hope that the CEOs (Chief Executive Optimists) are wrong.

Table from Chief Executive article:

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

Weekly Claims and Weekly Noise

Weekly initial unemployment claims were just released and they offer a good lesson when it comes to economic statistics - don't extrapolate too much from any one data point. If you'll recall, last week all of the green shooters were celebrating the news that the number of people collecting unemployment plunged by 148,000 for the week, the largest decline since November 2001. I raised the overlooked question as to whether this decline could be attributed to people going back to work or people having exhausted their benefits. It was also odd that the weekly number of initial claims had remained above 600,000 if the employment situation had truly improved so dramatically (link to last week's post).

Fast forward to 15 minutes ago, and we find that the latest weekly claims figure shows an increase of 15,000 to 627,000. Also, last week's initial figure was revised higher from 608,000 to 612,000. Furthermore, the number of people collecting unemployment insurance jumped by 29,000. Clearly, there is no sign of employment improvement in this picture. Let's see how the green shooters try to spin this one.

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

Good News On Weekly Claims?

There are plenty of positive headlines this morning about the decline in the number of people collecting unemployment insurance. Here are the opening paragraphs of a Bloomberg article:

The number of Americans receiving claims for unemployment benefits dropped for the first time since January, adding to evidence the job market is starting to thaw.

The number of people collecting unemployment insurance plunged by 148,000 in the week to June 6, the most since November 2001, to 6.69 million, the Labor Department said today in Washington. Initial claims rose by 3,000 to 608,000 in the week ended June 13, in line with forecasts.

The average number of claims over the last four weeks fell to the lowest level in four months, an indication that the U.S. economy is stabilizing after the worst recession in half a century. Even so, companies are likely to be slow to hire new employees, sending unemployment rates higher, analysts said.

It never ceases to amaze me how articles are spun based upon prevailing psychology. When the market is rising, all news is good news and vice versa.

In fairness, perhaps this is evidence that the labor market is beginning to thaw. However, there is another explanation that isn't being discussed. Unemployment insurance doesn't last indefinitely. Maybe what we're seeing is people falling out of the program because they've exhausted their benefits. This is no less plausible than the bullish spin, yet it has tremendously different implications for the economy.

It's interesting to note that the weekly claims number did not fall. Shouldn't we expect to see this if the labor market is thawing?

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

April Employment and The Joy of Birth

The headline from Bloomberg states, "U.S. Loses 539,000 Jobs, Fewer Than Forecast, in Sign Economy Stabilizing." After looking through the release, I have just a couple of comments.

First, expectations were for a loss of 600,000 jobs. The better-than-expected result can be attributed to the addition of 72,000 government jobs, with most of those jobs being added at the federal level. This is hardly surprising given the record spending coming out of Washington. It probably took 72,000 people just to spell check the budget. Our ever-expanding federal government is hardly a source of strong future economic growth.

More significantly, the Birth/Death model registered its largest monthly gain of the past 12 months. In the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, the government birth/death model has projected that 226,000 jobs were created in April. 76,000 jobs were apparently "born" in the leisure and hospitality sector, despite hotel occupancy rates plummeting. I suppose if we count all of the Craigslist ads for "personal massages" that might make sense. Back all of these assumed jobs out of the total and we're left with a loss of 765,000 jobs in April.

But you won't read about this 765,000 loss because all is right with the world again. The banks are stress-free, consumer confidence is rising, housing is bottoming, we're in a new bull market, and debt and non-performing assets are oh so yesterday.

Disclaimer: The Rubbernecker is once again shorting select U.S. equities.

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

March Employment - Still Hard To Take Seriously

The March employment numbers came out yesterday, and the headline numbers were in-line with expectations. 663,000 jobs were lost, and the unemployment rate jumped to 8.5%. The Obama administration is modeling an unemployment rate of 8.9% by the end of the year. For us not to blow past that figure we're going to need to see a serious moderation in the pace of job losses, a hefty increase in the civilian labor force (the denominator of the unemployment rate), or a healthy dose of government data manipulation.

Speaking of data manipulation, the job loss figure for January was revised down by 86,000 jobs, a 13% revision two months after the fact. Interestingly, the February number was not revised -- yet. Also, the birth/death model (which I've written about previously) registered an increase of 114,000 jobs in March. It claims that 23,000 construction jobs were "born" last month. They must have been counting the people constructing tent cities across the country.

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

"Hall"f Baked

I have nothing against Glenn Hall of TheStreet.com personally. I know nothing about him. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I can't believe some of what he writes. I'm starting to think that TheStreet.com doesn't have an editing staff.

Glenn writes a piece for TheStreet.com that he calls "Today's Outrage." As you can probably surmise, Glenn proceeds in each article to rant, complain, or disgrunt about his topic-du-jour. My turn. I recently read a couple of his pieces that made my jaw hit the floor.

The first one is from today's article entitled "Today's Outrage: Sears Isn't Worth $4 Billion." Glenn writes:

How can Sears be worth $31.84 a share? Target fetches only $29.54, and JC Penney is down to $16.55.

At the other end of the retail spectrum, investors are only paying $6.41 for Macy's, and at the low end, Family Dollar Stores are only trading at $26.

Wal-Mart is one of the few higher-valued competitors, with its shares at $53.

So I have to ask: Who thinks Sears is better than Target or even JC Penney for that matter?

The outrageous spread between Sears' share price and better-positioned retailers may be due for a correction after investors digest today's earnings report from Sears. The company reported a loss of $146 million for its third quarter, which ended Nov. 1, and said sales fell at both its Kmart and Sears chains in the U.S.

This is scary. We're talking Stock Investing 101. Trying to compare the value of different companies by looking at only their stock prices is beyond absurd. Price alone is irrelevant. If you're going to compare equity values of different companies you need to consider how many shares of stock are outstanding. Sears isn't "worth" $31.84 a share. Sears is worth $4 billion (market value). Sears trades at $31.84 a share because Sears has a market value of $4 billion, and the company has 126.4 million shares outstanding.

What would happen if Sears did a 2-for-1 stock split tomorrow? The share count would double to 252.8 million shares, and the price of the stock would decrease by 50% to just under $16. I suppose that this would satisfy Mr. Hall since SHLD would then have a lower stock price than Target, JC Penney, and Family Dollar Stores. Nothing fundamental would change, however. Sears would still have a market value of $4 billion, but for some reason Mr. Hall would be more satisfied with the "spread" between the various share prices. This is the kind of mistake someone completely unfamiliar with stocks might make.

For the record, the following are the market values of the companies mentioned by Glenn:

• Target: $21.7 billion
• JC Penney: $3.6 billion
• Family Dollar Stores: $3.6 billion
• Macy's: $2.7 billion
• Wal-Mart: $208 billion
  

The second piece by Hall that caught my attention is entitled "Today's Outrage: Google-O-Meter Signals Doom." Glenn writes:

The true sign of how bad it's going to get comes from Google, which is throwing its contract workers to the wolves.

The Internet search giant and ultimate barometer of consumer behavior says it will significantly reduce the number of its roughly 10,000 contractors in anticipation of a worsening economy.

No problem here. Clearly, this is yet another anecdotal sign of a weakening global economy. At the same time, good for Google. One of the knocks on the company has been its free-spending ways. If business is slowing, costs need to be cut, and reducing contract workers strikes me as a logical and reasonable place to slice. Glenn continues:

It may be the right thing to do from a fiduciary perspective, but the folks at Google don't seem to realize how damaging it is to the psyche of consumers and investors alike to see the ultimate growth machine scaling back.

He should have quit after "perspective." It's most certainly the right thing to do from a fiduciary perspective. Why in the world should Google be worried about the damage "to the psyche of consumers and investors?" This is investment analysis that only Dr. Phil and Karl Marx could like.

Is Google owned by shareholders, or is it a federal agency? Why is it up to Google to single-handedly repair investor psychology? Maybe Glenn would like Google to ramp up spending and hiring to the point at which net income will be wiped out and the stock completely destroyed (more so than it has already). I wonder what that would do to investor psyche?

I had bought some Google just before their last earnings report and sold it shortly thereafter, so I have no current position in Google. I do, however, applaud the company for getting serious about the cost side of its income statement. This will certainly help them to sustain strong free cash flow generation during the downturn. The day Google or any company starts basing its decisions on "investor and consumer psyche" is the day I short that stock.

Disclosure: The Rubbernecker is long simple math and short Dr. Phil.

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

A Quick Note On Employment

The headlines have covered the big picture. We lost another 240,000 jobs last month, and September's figure was revised lower by 125,000. These are terrible numbers but not surprising given the sharp fall in economic activity in recent weeks. Plenty of companies have been announcing layoffs (right-sizing), and the management commentary on the conference calls that I've heard makes it clear that more cuts are coming.

One of my favorite components of the employment report is the birth/death model. A review of this model is available here. Remember that this model is responsible for about 1/3 of the total nonfarm payroll figure. For September, the birth/death model continued to spit out some absurd figures. Despite a fall of 240,000 jobs in the headline number, the birth/death model assumes that a net 71,000 jobs were created.

This means that if the birth/death model had conservatively predicted that no jobs were created or lost, the headline figure would have been a loss of 311,000 jobs. If the birth/death model had actually calculated a net loss of jobs (which was almost certainly the case), then the headline number would have been even worse. This model is notorious for being way off at turning points. These figures will be revised in a big way at a later date.

It makes me wonder how many people we pay to sit at the Department of Labor and churn out this misleading random data.

Disclosure: The Rubbernecker is short useless models and 4 out of 5 statisticians.

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The Market Rubbernecker is affiliated with Aspera Financial, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Please read the disclaimer on the home page of the Market Rubbernecker site.

August Employment: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Another 84,000 jobs gone and another large jump in the unemployment rate -- this time from 5.7% to 6.1%. The auto industry was a big player last month, which is no surprise given the dismal car sales figures we've seen in recent months. Motor vehicles and parts manufacturers shed 39,000 jobs and dealers let go another 14,100. Rumor has is that to spur sales, GM, Chrysler, and Ford will soon be offering a free house with each car purchase. Also on the losing end of the employment report were employment services firms, which reported a decline of 53,400 jobs last month.

Those adding jobs in August include the government (go figure) at 17,000 jobs, educational services (16,300), hospitals (14,800), and social assistance (uh-oh) which added 11,200 jobs. Also of note, construction had its best showing in a while with a loss of only 8,000 jobs due to some resilience in the nonresidential arena which is unlikely to last.

These figures are bad enough on an absolute basis, and they were worse than the expected decline of 75,000 jobs. Worse still, June's figures were revised from a loss of 51,000 jobs to a loss of 100,000. Let's also not ignore the increase in the marginally attached. Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics release:

About 1.6 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) were marginally attached to the labor force in August, an increase of 275,000 over the past 12 months. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

When we combine the unemployed with the marginally attached we come up with a rate of 10.7%, which is the highest in 14 years.

And, finally, let's turn to my personal favorite -- the Birth/Death model. (For a review of the Birth/Death model, see my article "Death, Taxes, and a Ridiculous Employment Report.") This go around, our government statisticians have come up with an increase of 125,000 jobs for August due to net firm births. This number makes no sense unless these are all recently laid-off folks starting up their own Ebay stores to sell off their ceramic unicorn collections to pay for gas for their SUVs. The fact that the birth/death model estimates that 9,000 financial jobs and 16,000 construction jobs were added last month should be proof enough of its absurdity.

Let's conservatively assume that there was no real job change per the birth/death model. That would mean that there were 209,000 nonfarm job losses in August instead of the reported 84,000.

Unfortunately, over the next few months, the employment figures are likely to suffer further as the last of the federal tax rebate checks are largely spent. In addition, the recent rebound in the value of the dollar coupled with increased economic weakness overseas will likely put the brakes on the recent export revival.

The good news is that if these trends continue long enough, US employment is certain to rebound as China and India will eventually start outsourcing their call centers and sock manufacturing business to us.


Disclosure: The Rubbernecker is short cutesy ceramic unicorns and sock manufacturing.

Employment Report Disaster

A loss of 49,000 jobs. If only it were so benign. Today, we add to the heaping pile of rotting economic indicators the latest monthly employment report from the Bureau of (lack of) Labor Statistics. At least this time the headlines don't appear to be shading the report, but they're not fully capturing just how ugly it is.

Let's start with the nonfarm payroll numbers. This showed a loss of 49,000 jobs in the month. Nothing too surprising in the breakdown -- construction and manufacturing down, service-providing up modestly, professional and business services down, education and health services continued their strong steady climb, and our "less is more" Republican-led government continues to grow. The only somewhat surprising number was that leisure and hospitality employment continued to grow despite an obviously stressful time for the consumer.

Now let's turn to the unemployment rate, which is the number we'll be hearing about in the news today. Its one month increase of .5% is the highest monthly jump in over 20 years! In layman's terms, that's bad. How did this happen? Double-whammy. The number of employed persons fell by 285,000 last month while the number of unemployed rose by 861,000! There are now 8.5 million people counted as unemployed, a level 30% higher than a year ago. And, yet, we're not in a recession?

What's also interesting is that the increase in the unemployment rate hit everyone. Men, women, teens, hermaphrodites, loan originators, and people of every color. Teens in particular took a hard hit with their rate climbing from 15.4% to 18.7%. Good luck getting your teens out of the house this summer. Even the professions that they're overqualified for (like investment banker, mortgage broker, home appraiser) aren't hiring.

Well, if you've made it this far you're in for a real treat -- the birth/death model. If you're not familiar with this, go back and read my post on April's employment report. Incredibly, this latest employment report includes an assumed 217,000 jobs created! If you back that out, then this month's nonfarm payroll figure would be registering a loss of 266,000 jobs! This birth/death model is assuming that 42,000 CONSTRUCTION jobs were added last month. That's just insane. Foreclosures are skyrocketing, builders are struggling, home sales are plummeting, prices are collapsing, but 42,000 construction jobs were added. I hope the folks at the BLS are at least a little embarrassed about putting out such a number. Just as ridiculous, the model assumes that 77,000 new leisure and hospitality jobs were created. Apparently, the 2 million additional unemployed people we have this year are all spending their last dimes at the beach resort getting cucumber mud facials in the spa. Come on. Even Starbucks is retrenching, and people are addicted to coffee.

So what does all of this mean for investors? Bernanke and other Fed member have been recently trying to talk up the dollar and have been hinting that the rate cuts are behind us. Given the data we've seen of late and the continued weakness in the economy, I can't imagine the Fed is suddenly going to develop a spine and actually start fighting inflation and the falling dollar by raising rates any time soon. They wouldn't have cut rates so far and so fast if this was their real concern (If you want to see a real Central Bank, check out the ECB). Bernanke always appears calm and collected in public, as he should, but I've got to believe he's spending a lot of time in his office mumbling to himself, violently brushing nonexistent bugs off of his pants, and dreaming of the day he can charge ridiculously high speaking fees to tell everyone that it wasn't his fault.

This report should put a nice headwind in front of the recent dollar mini-rally which also might provide a further boost for gold and commodities. It certainly isn't stock market positive as even further interest rate cuts would have limited, if any, positive impact, but it is clearly supportive of bonds. (The markets just opened, and not surprisingly, this is the initial reaction.). Of course, this all holds true only until the next bit of bogus manipulated data comes out and the traders and spinners tee it up all over again.

In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how the bulls try and spin this one. I imagine it will go something like this:

Well, the loss of jobs wasn't as bad as expected so that's outstanding and super bullish. Besides, that's old data. The month of May was over, like a whole week ago. The market looks forward, and I'm sure June will look even better. Heck, I just replaced two of my overpaid cabana boys with 4 illegals. That's a doubling of employment! The fact that the unemployment rate climbed a touch is simply testament to the fact that we Americans are a hard-working lot, and more of us are eager to get back into the labor force and do our part for the economy. As for the birth/death model you mention, I've never heard of that, but I can assure you it's bullish for tech stocks.

Disclosure: The author is short perma-bulls, the birth/death model, and cabana boys.

Death, Taxes, and A Ridiculous Employment Report

I’m finally getting around to reviewing the latest monthly employment report. I would have tackled it sooner, but I don’t type well when I’m rolling on the floor laughing and coffee is coming out of my nose. Now that my sides have stopped hurting and my nose isn’t burning, let’s take a look at the report.

To recap, the market was looking for a loss of 80,000 jobs in April, and the “official” number came in much better at a loss of only 20,000. The media pretty much universally applauded the report with headlines such as:

“US Stocks Rally on Jobs Report” – International Herald Tribune

“Jobs: Glimmer of Good News in April” – BusinessWeek

“Fur Seal Caught Trying to Have Sex With Penguin” – FoxNews

“Stocks Seeing Strong Gains On Employment Report” – RTT News

“Job Loss Far Below Expectations” – TheStreet.com

This employment report reminded me of the recent Google and Intel quarterly earnings reports. If you keep bringing down the estimates prior to the report to a level that’s easy to beat, you look like a hero when your report is just bad instead of apocalyptic. The purported loss of 20,000 jobs should look very suspect to anyone willing to pop an extra Ritalin, take a few minutes, and look beyond the headlines (this rules out most portfolio managers, government employees, and the breathing).

To really understand the employment numbers we have to look at what the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calls its Birth/Death model. According to the BLS,

There is an unavoidable lag between an establishment opening for business and its appearing on the sample frame and being available for sampling. Because new firm births generate a portion of employment growth each month, non-sampling methods must be used to estimate this growth.

What’s going on here? Basically, the BLS samples businesses and government agencies for its employment report. These sampled entities account for about 1/3 of all nonfarm payroll jobs. The BLS should be able to accurately measure the change in employment for those firms that remain in the sample from one month to the next. After coming in late for work on one of his 27 annual non-holiday work days, catching up on the latest Hollywood gossip online, and taking a lunch break that would make even the Italians blush, your average government employee can still probably muster up the simple arithmetic needed for this calculation. The picture is a little fuzzier for those firms that die (go out of business) since some of them may be too busy hocking their nail guns and backhoes at the local pawn shop to respond to the survey, and others will have already fired everyone, including whoever was responsible for reporting their data to the BLS. The final factor is the birth of new firms. This one isn’t directly measurable in any given month since it takes about 7 months before a newly spawned firm is available for sampling.

So, the BLS created a statistical model to estimate the net employment effect of the recently deceased and the newly hatched. Unfortunately, their model doesn’t appear to be very effective at times when a significant change in trend is occurring. This is hardly surprising. They’re no better than any other government agency, circus monkey, Federal Reserve chairman, or economist at knowing when a recession is underway (no offense to the monkey), so we shouldn’t expect their model to accurately account for this. So there’s a lag between what the birth/death model calculates and what’s happening in the real world at significant turning points in economic activity. When we’re headed into a recession, the model is spitting out fairy tale numbers based on much more robust historical comparisons while real jobs are disappearing. When the economy is turning up and creating more jobs, the model is finally reflecting the preceding deterioration and predicting fewer birthed businesses. Interestingly, they used to admit to this shortcoming on their website but no longer do.

With that background let’s turn to the most recent employment data. According to the bullish BLS report, the economy only lost 20,000 jobs last month. Virtually everyone in the media focused on this figure (including the experts dropped off at CNBC daycare). What they should have been discussing (had they been aware of it) is that this figure includes 267,000 jobs assumed to have been created by the birth/death model! Unless Obama infiltrated the BLS with his cronies who secretly adjusted the numbers for his 7 new states, this number is ridiculous. Ignoring those assumed jobs, the economy would have registered a loss of 287,000 jobs. Can you imagine how the market would have reacted to that headline?!

So, GDP is flat-lining, the financial and retail industries are suffering, manufacturing remains a basket case, and housing is in freefall, but somehow this model assumes that new businesses created 267,000 jobs last month. It stretches the limits of one’s imagination. Where exactly is this job growth? Not everyone can be a repo man, auctioneer, or Wal-Mart greeter. The model tells us that 72,000 jobs were added in the “Professional & Business Services” category. Maybe all of those ex-Realtors and mortgage brokers have reinvented themselves as credit repair specialists. 83,000 jobs were supposedly created in “Leisure and Hospitality”. I guess it’s possible if they’re counting all the new stay-at-home Dads. 8,000 new “Financial” jobs were supposedly created despite the carnage in banking. Maybe they recategorized all of the lawyers now lining up to sue the banks?

I saved the best category for last. The model assumes that 45,000 jobs were created in April in the construction industry. The construction industry! Seriously, why are we paying these folks? Why do we have or need a BLS if this is the quality of their work? How do they explain this? We all know that the construction firms are going out of business and laying people off. Residential building is screeching to a halt and commercial is now being impacted as well. I suppose all of those people who were fired from their construction jobs turned right around and started their own construction businesses to take advantage of all the business the firm that fired them didn’t have. Before hocking his nail gun I think our pawn shop friend used it to put the last nail in the coffin of common sense.

Here’s another point I love. The actual full release of the employment report runs to 28 pages. Guess how many of those pages make mention of the 267,000 birth boost? Zero. There is a reference to the existence of the birth/death model in the “Frequently Asked Questions” and the “Reliability of the Estimates” sections, but if you want to actually find the number you have to go to a separate web page (http://www.bls.gov/web/cesbd.htm).

Furthermore, we all know that the employment figures are often significantly revised. The birth/death figures are no different. So, why does anyone pay attention to these releases, and why does the market move on this “news”? First of all, most participants don’t take the time to delve into the details of these reports. As I mentioned, the BLS doesn’t even provide the birth/death figures in its 28-page release. Second, even if you know these numbers are inaccurate at best, if you think that the rest of the market is going to pay attention and trade off of them then you need to be interested in them, too. In this case, if Trader Timmy is going to jump off a bridge, you’d better at least go and dangle your toes off the edge.

As for the BLS statistical methodology, I’m not one to rush to judgment. In the interest of fairness, I decided to use their random sampling methodology on the BLS itself. The results were as expected. I just came up with the B and the S.