Economic Reports

The next two days of trading are going to be driven by the these four economic reports:

Thursday:
-Chain Store Sales for October (These are going to be awful)
-Jobless Claims

Friday:
-Employment Numbers (Unemployment Rate)
-Pending Home Sales

The basic idea of economic indicators revolves around a consensus (expected) number that economists compute. The market will move up if the numbers are better than expected or lower if the data is worse than expected. For example so Friday they are expecting the unemployment rate to be 6.3%, but if the data reports a 6.7% unemployment rate the market will sell off because of labor market fears. If the unemployment rate reported was 5.9% traders would be buying the market because the labor market is in better condition than most people expected.

*There is no cause and effect relationship between the consensus number and the reported figure. Proceed with caution because the market doesn't always act this way, but in general this is what occurs.