Jobs? Unemployment Rate Ticks Up; GM Sales Huge; The Market And Energy Page, T+224; Is HPE Really Poised To Fall 21%? -- September 1, 2017

Most important story of the day: Port Houston container terminals to resume operations Friday (today). -- source, WSJ. 

Futures up nicely. Again.

August jobs report, pending:

• everyone forecasts: 160,000 range
• Rick Santelli forecasts: 244,000 (he might have been right had previous monthly figures not been revised -- see below)
• actual: 156,000 vs forecast of 179,000
• actual: 4.4% vs expectations of 4.3%
• actual: U-6 underemployment rate -- 8.6% (I don't recall CNBC reporting this so prominently in the past -- certainly I don't recall seeing this data point being reported during the Obama administration; could be wrong); link for historical underemployment rate;
• 62.9% labor force participation; unchanged
• how did the market react? Dow immediately from +72 to +48 (wow, that was quick); several minutes later, recovered somewhat to +54 (if the actual number did not change much, at least the trend reversed, on the upside)
• July figures revised downward to  189 from 209 (govt miscounted govt employees -- go figure)
• June figures revised downward to 210 from 231 (govt miscounted govt employees -- go figure)

Underemployment: see above. The 8.6% was never put into context -- at 8.6% -- almost back to historical lows. Another non-story.

Auto sales, link here: Phil LeBeau (CNBC), expect, "solid, but not great" numbers. Expect sales rate of 100 - 200,000. Of course, over the next few weeks/months, the effect of Hurricane Harvey.

• Ford: down 2.1% vs estimates, down 2.4%
• GM: up 7.5% vs 1.9% estimates
• Fiat: down 10.5 % vs down 4.7% estimate

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WSJ Headlines (and Comments)

Happy face: Job satisfaction highest in decades.

Debt ceiling: Harvey relief bill could  help Congress raise debt ceiling.  (This is a no-brainer.)

Trainwreck: White House will cut ads and grants aimed at encouraging ObamaCare sign-ups.

GDP: Op-ed: Houston-area economy is larger than Sweden and will drag down US GDP (by the way, Hurricane Harvey was the final nail in that coffin of any chance of a September, 2017, "Fed rate" increase; possibly true for December "Fed rate"-- no increase once he $190 billion damage estimates continue to roll in -- unless, of course, I underestimate how much the Feds hate Texas)

Peggy Noonan: the American spirit is alive in Texas.

Nightmare? If Trump ends DACA -- Obama's "Dreamers Act" -- the issue falls to Congress. (And that's how it should be done. Every Dem will vote for it; and, every RINO will vote for it; will Trump veto it; if so, veto-proof?)

Easy come, easy go: Texas judge quashes Obama-era overtime pay rule. (This one should be interesting.)

Oh, yeah; Apple confirms September 12, 2017, launch date.

Oh-oh: Pre-market: HPE down 21%. See below.

Oh-oh: Meg Whitman has a different mess to clean up. See below.

IRAs: Roth vs Traditional 401 (k): study finds a clear winner.

US bombers in show-of-force after North Korea missile. (Under all previous administrations, US "gave in" to North Korea's demands after North Korea launched missiles; this time it's different. It would be interesting to see how the generals "voted" on this one; we all know it was Trump's decision. Huge story.)

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Meg Whitman

From The WSJ --

So Ms. Whitman has some explaining to do, which hopefully will come during the company’s fiscal third-quarter earnings call next week. That was already shaping up to be a difficult task. Hewlett Packard’s stock price has fallen by 7% following each of its last two quarterly reports. A slump in the sales of servers, data-storage gear and other enterprise tech hardware have put pressure on what is left of the business following the divestitures of its services and software divisions.

Ms. Whitman needs to show a way out of that slump, which won’t be easy. Splitting from the computer-and-printer half nearly two years ago established Hewlett Packard Enterprise with a little over $50 billion a year in annual revenue. The subsequent divestitures leave the Enterprise Group and Financial Services units remaining, which are projected to generate about $29 billion in combined revenue for the fiscal year ending in October. That is down 6% from what those businesses generated last year.

A big problem is servers, which will account for more than 40% of Hewlett Packard’s revenue. Server sales for the six-month period ended April 30 slid more than 13% from the same period last year. Rival Dell—now private— has been pricing its own servers aggressively and has gained share. And Microsoft —Hewlett’s largest customer—has been cutting back on server orders as part of a broader move toward designing its own gear to power its data centers.

Maggie May, Rod Stewart

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