U.S. Stocks Set to Fall on Deepening Unemployment: Chart of Day By Hideki Sagiike and Masaki Kondo
April 27 (
Bloomberg) -- The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is poised to fall as chronic unemployment rises to a record among jobless Americans, according to Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co. the brokerage unit of Japan’s biggest bank by market value.
The CHART OF THE DAY shows the S&P 500 and ratio of Americans jobless for more than 27 weeks relative to the total number of unemployed. The equities gauge has jumped 80 percent from a more than 12-year low on March 9, 2009, even as long-term joblessness surged to 44.1 percent in March, almost double the level a year earlier and highest since records began in 1948. The lower panel tracks overall unemployment, which has declined 0.4 percentage point since reaching a 26-year peak in October.
“The government’s stimulus measures have driven up stock prices” and helped disguise the unemployment problem, said Seiki Orimi, a senior investment strategist at Tokyo-based Mitsubishi UFJ. “Stocks will fall, at some point. For now, people in the market are tricking themselves” into believing in a U.S. jobs recovery.
Consumer spending accounted for about 70 percent of the world’s largest economy in the fourth quarter, when gross domestic product expanded at a 5.6 percent annual rate, the fastest pace in more than six years. Output in the three months to March probably expanded 3 percent, based on the median forecast of 60 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The S&P 500 may fall as much as 5 percent in an “overdue” decline, according to a technical analysis this month by Thomas Schroeder, managing director at Chart Partners Group Ltd. .........(more)
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