Companies Reporting Today; Unemployment Claims Plunge -- Why Was Ms Yellen Worried? Why ERF Has Been On A Tear Lately

Job watch. I always look forward to Thursdays. It's the one day I get to spend a bit of time reading fiction, the weekly first time unemployment claims. They pretend to tell us the truth and we pretend to believe them. And even fewer pretend to care. And the spin continues:

The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell 26,000 last week to 319,000, the latest sign that the job market is slowly improving.

But then reality sets in:

Despite the improvement, the 4-week average, reflecting sharp increases in the prior two weeks, is still trending higher, at 324,750 for a third straight gain and nearly 10,000 higher than the month-ago comparison.

I guess this analyst didn't read the 4-week average which rose again this week:

“Claims are drifting lower on a longer-trend basis,” said Jacob Oubina, a senior U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets LLC in New York, whose forecast for 320,000 filings was among the closest in the Bloomberg survey. “I think hiring will creep slightly higher.”  -- reported at Bloomberg

Other realities:

• more businesses shutting down than starting up -- The Weekly Standard
• 58 million working-age people -- not working -- FreeBeacon.com
• record low number of ages 25 - 29 employed

All of this will, of course, keep wage and price inflation at bay.

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment decisions based on what you read here or what you think you may have read here. 

Natural gas prices are driving energy shares higher. I alluded to that yesterday when posting notes from a transcript of an earnings call. Remember when natural gas was in the $2.50 range? Now, it is solidly in the $4.50 to $5.00 range. Double. More than double. Contribution by Michael Fitzsimmons over at SeekingAlpha. The article explains why ERF has been on a tear lately. Fitzsimmons is one of the three best energy contributors over at SeekingAlpha; the other two? Zeits and Filloon.

For those Seeking Alpha followers who read my two-part series Is The Pendulum Swinging From Oil Back To Natural Gas, it should not have come as a surprise that StatOil reported nicely higher Q1 earnings, primarily as a result of a doubling of North American natural gas prices. The main driver of those higher prices was a cold winter and decade-low domestic natural gas storage supplies. While the winter is now in the rear-view mirror - the natural gas storage data is still very bullish.