The May Payrolls report shows what else? Booming and laggard Services drives payrolls at +339,000
Killing an inflated economy is proving to be touchy (and sticky) business. As manufacturing continues to weaken and forward inflation signals continue to fade (per 2023 trends), the Good Ship Lollipop sails on with its vaunted (is that another word for bloated?) and lagging services sectors acting as the wind in its sails.
Click image, get report from BLS:
And you know who is certainly not complaining.
As usual for a latter stage economic situation in this vast ‘services’ economy, you have a nice headline driven by Education and Health Services, Professional and Business Services, Leisure and Hospitality (services), a big pop in Government (services, such as they are) and of course Construction, which is tied to the services economy, not the productive economy. For good measure, if you add Other Services to Financial Activities (services) you get a healthy pop there too.
As for productive endeavor: Manufacturing? Well, it continues to recede and mining/logging are going nowhere.
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I tell ya Gary, my brain right now is going FOMO full tilt. If it weren’t for such great rates on cash, I’d be asking myself for the millionth time over the past 15 years, why am I in gold? Why wasn’t I just all in on the market, regardless of ups and downs? Stupid shiny rock. 😉
I know it is crazy talk, so close to retirement. Damn, this market is so good at messing with people’s heads. In the end, I got some bond interest payments yesterday for June, and May interest on cash, and that puts me way more at ease about not caring that the market is roaring.
Well Mike, SPX only hit the underside of the primary target 2 days ago. So it’s all been to plan. Also, it’s a thin market being led by Tech/Semi, also according to plan. Today we bounced in the non-Goldilocks stuff. But patience in the market is measured in months. You had too much of a diet of SoH, IMO. Just because perma-bears say the market will go down doesn’t mean it will in any convenient time frame. As for gold, it’s as I have said… a counter-weight to the speculative stuff. Nothing more, nothing less.
You’d make a good therapist (I am serious)!
In my younger years I took a major interest in psychology and in particular, Carl Jung. It fascinates me still. The human shadow, individual and collective subconscious, the potentials for evil and/or emotional disorder, even violence therein. But in markets I see psychology all around and as you know I hate (as in despise, abhor) herds and herding. I hate leaders and followers. I hate it all. I hate that the gold community has bred a culture of follower robots who swallow it all, hook, line and sinker and then get pissed when normal corrections come about (like now). But whatever. I am actually getting aggravated writing this comment now. :-(