Well the markets remains firmly in the red as the Fed speaks, oil plunges and we wait for retail sales tomorrow.  We got more economic news for the Fed to digest, but nothing to give them heartburn as much of it was unchanged and didn’t really move the needle.

First, the seasonally adjusted weekly initial unemployment claims for the week ending November 7, was 276,000. This was unchanged from the prior week.  The 4-week moving average, a more meaningful number, was up 5,000 to 267,750 from the prior week.  For the week ending October 31, the seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was unchanged from the prior week at 1.6%, and the insured unemployment was 2,174,000 up 5000 from the prior week.  The 4-week moving average was 2, 165,250 an increase of 2,250 from the prior week’s revised average. So all in all, not much change in unemployment.

Next, we received the Job Openings and Labor Turnover (Jolts) report for September.  Once again, overall, not much changed in openings, hires, separations, quits, or layoffs and discharges from the prior month.  Job openings were 5.5m, a rate of 3.7%.  Although there was little activity in total for private and government job, professional and business services saw an increase of 126,000 openings and retail trade gained 64,000.   In September, there was 5.0m hires, a rate of 3.5%. Total separations in September was 4.8m of which 2.7m were quits, of which the increases came from accommodation and food services, and durable goods manufacturing jobs.

Then we got the weekly EIA inventory report for the week ending on November 6, which sent the market down significantly, with oil at two and half months lows.   Analyst were expecting a build of 1.2m in crude oil inventories, instead it had a much larger build of 4.224m.

• Gasoline inventories had a draw of -2.102
• Distillate inventories had a build of 0.352

Also hurting oil were comments from European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi who told European Parliament that the ECB stands behind its plans to expand its easing programs.  Appears Draghi is more dovish than ever.  Down went the euro taking oil with it.  Seems like euro-dollar parity is becoming more likely.  The energy complex is really getting hit hard once again today.