The weekly jobless claims keeps climbing, this morning the report was up 22,000 to 496,000. We are almost back to that horrid level of 500,000. But let's try to remain skeptical on both-sides of the fence.  There is no doubt a reason as to why it might be worse than expected. First the "January effect" - which is always weak because we start seeing layoffs of the holiday help. Second, the U.S. has been hit with 3 massive storms - slowing business and creating some short-term stilted growth.  The problem with those two factors is it is very hard to say that this is only a short-term problem and it will return to reflect a steady decrease in the unemployment or whether it is hiding that fact that while it may be impacting the numbers that they are still looking worse than expected. I guess we will have to wait until March to see if the storms (as some have claimed) are putting a short-term increase in jobless claims.
                For now the market didn't like that at all and the futures saw a sharp sell-off, which reflects how fragile this market is to any negative news. A rush out of equities and back into the dollar - seems to be the panic trade of the morning. At these levels we look to be giving up all of yesterday's gains and we could certainly get back to those pivot (straddle) points. It's a gamma traders game for sure and we are seeing frustration among investors.
 
http://www.cnbc.com/id/35580054

                The Durable Goods climb more than expected, which you would think would offset the worse than expected jobless claims, but when we take a closer look at the Durable Goods Orders the surge in bookings for commercial aircraft has masked the decline in demand for other businesses. It was pure transpiration that carried the number higher (primarily the transportation was playing catch-up as it had seen a few months of slack in late 2009). Once we strip out the transportation orders the  Durable Goods orders actually FELL .6%, the biggest drop since August of last year.
             When we look more closely at the number, the alarming part is once we strip out the defense items and aircraft, which is the number used for calculating the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), it actually declined 1.5% in January, after a 2.4% gain in December. Bookings for this group (used to determine future business spending), also fell 2.9% in January.
                Clearly the consumer in this nation is still weak with little access to credit.
 
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aMbR6MWBSNSM&pos=3