Hmmmm.....

Where's the mortgage?

"The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended September 28 decreased 2.7 percent to 636.7.

Some market analysts say mortgage application data has been artificially inflated in recent months because prospective borrowers file multiple applications to obtain a single loan due to widespread tightening of lending standards."

Naw, you think?

You have to love the Wall Street pump monkeys.....

"U.S. stock futures dipped on Wednesday as investors awaited a report on the health of the nation's service economy.

Any weakness in service sector growth could support the case for further interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve."

Amusing. A recession - which would be the case for "more rate cuts" - is a reason for a rally?

ADP Employment came in materially lighter than expected, but not catastrophically so at 58,000. Expectations were for 78k. The market didn't react much to it in the futures.... so the question becomes, what's the government contribution in (or outside) this? We shall see Friday. Without much clarity - neither a good number nor a disastrously bad one, the pressure is being ratcheted up materially on the Friday release.

ISM Non-Manufacturing (services) came in at 54.8, down 1 point and spot-on with expectations. The market bounced very slightly on the release; new orders dropped a bit, prices paid increased to 66.1, employment index bounced back to 52.7. Over all nothing material here different than expectations - not a recession call in here, but remember - this data is all retrospective in that it looks at what people did, not what they might be doing in the future.

Oh, and auto sales, reported yesterday, sucked. What's more interesting though is this:

"Industrywide U.S. sales fell for a fourth consecutive month, by 2.9 percent to 1.31 million light vehicles."

Four months of declines in a row in one of the most important consumer durables? I wonder what that means?

Oh, one more thing. You know how people are saying that "earnings are great"? Uh, no. This morning we woke up to find that the consensus third quarter estimate for the S&P 500 had been cut IN HALF to 2%! While it is entirely reasonable to believe that this number will be beaten - perhaps even doubled - in other words, earnings growth might hit 4%, THIS WOULD GIVE YOU A P/E/G RATIO ON THE S&P 500 OF NEARLY 4.0, WHICH IS FIFTY PERCENT OVERVALUED!

That could get VERY interesting.

Goldilocks eh?

I don't think so.

IMHO the BBQ is hot and Goldilocks has some fine mesquite sauce slathered all over her naked carcass.....

Here's your technical!