Equity markets across the globe were mixed overnight, without any major geopolitical or economic catalyst driving the change. As a result, the major US equity indices opened flat, but all three ultimately declined by about 0.3%. The Dow Jones is having a rough day thanks to declines in a few components – namely Home Depot (HD) due to a security breach, and Goldman Sachs (GS) and JP Morgan (JPM) due to the potential for further domestic bank regulations. Many investors (and consumers) are waiting for Apple’s (AAPL) unveiling of new products, including the iPhone 6, a smartwatch and a new payments system. This is quite significant since Apple has not yet released any new products in 2014. While it seemed as though we past much of the jobs-hype at the beginning of the month, we received one more piece to add to the confusion this morning.

The JOLTS report, which is the abbreviation for the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, provides a monthly headline number of job openings across all sectors. According to this latest report, the overall labor market remains quite sluggish. For the month of July, there were 4.673 million job openings, little changed from June's 4.675 million. The hires rate (3.5%) and the separations rate (3.3%) were unchanged in July and remain relatively low. Within separations, the quits rate (1.8%) and the layoffs and discharges rate (1.2%) were also unchanged. There were 4.872 million hires in July, compared to 4.791 million in June and the rate was 3.5 percent. Year over year, the number of hires (not seasonally adjusted) increased for total nonfarm and total private, but didn’t change much for government jobs. The hires level increased from a year ago for construction and retail trade jobs, but decreased for educational services. The number of separations was little changed from June for total nonfarm, total private, and government. We would like to see the number of quits substantially grow since it would mean that more workers feel comfortable enough to quit their jobs and look for new work. As it is, this latest JOLTS report will likely result in the doves at the Fed further advocating for easy monetary policies. However, according to the chart below, job openings have been substantially improving since the start of 2014 – looking further back, we are almost back to pre-recession levels.

On a side note, the ICSC-Goldman's report for the week of September 6^th was mixed, with week-to-week same-store sales up 0.7%, but the year-on-year rate slipped to 4.0% compared to the 4.8% increase in the prior week. Overall, retail sales are described as healthy and the report notes that sales for the month of September are often the third highest of any month thanks to the end of the back-to-school season and the beginning of the fall merchandise season. Additionally, Redbook's latest same-store sales comparisons were mixed, showing no change in the year-on-year rate, at 4.9%, but a slowing gain for the September-to-August outlook, now at a thin 0.2% compared to 0.7% in the prior week.