Weekly Jobless Claims and Consumer Prices Bring Profit Taking

Headline inflation, the CPI, is mostly in-line with expectations for the month of December. The headline CPI was up by 0.3%, while the core reading that is ex-food and energy was up by only 0.1%. Both numbers met the Bloomberg consensus estimates from its pool of economists.

Weekly jobless claims came in at 327,000 for the past week, down from last week’s revised figure of 328,000 (versus 330,000 shown without a revision). Bloomberg had the consensus estimate at 326,000.

Some 1.35 million people received special extended benefits during the final week of December. The continuing jobless claims, the army of the unemployed (reported with a one-week lag), rose by 174,000 to 3.03 million.

All in all, these reports were mostly in-line with expectations. Stock futures are lower: -3.75 on the S&P 500 and -33 on the Down Jones Industrial Average, likely just on profit taking.