Favorable jobs report

US employers added 162K jobs in Mar, the largest job gain in 3 years. The total includes 48K temp workers hired by the US Census (fewer than expected). Private employers added 123K jobs, the most since May 2007. This is the latest sign that the economy is mending. However, the unemployment rate remained at 9.7% (still very troubling) for a 3rd month. 15M are still out of work, roughly double the total before the recession began. When the underemployed & discouraged workers are included, the "underemployment" rate ticked up to 16.9% from 16.8%. Healing is likely to be slow.

•Payrolls in U.S. Rise by 162,000, Most in Three Years; Rate Holds at 9.7%


Unemployment rate - 1 year





There is a lot of excitement about the new iPad from Apple (AAPL). AAPL has done extremely well even thru a very difficult recession as shown in the chart. From what I've seen on TV, it looks a lot like my Acer netbook I'm using now & costs a lot more. The big attraction is that the user can touch the screen as an input device but I'm not sure how important that will be. In addition, the $499 iPad is the scaled down version. Little extras will drive the price up towards $1K. I don't know if iPad will be the huge success (less than huge success is unsuccessful for them) that is being talked about. The market cap for AAPL puts it in 3rd place for all companies (i.e. ahead of Wal-Mart (WMT)).


Apple --- 2 years





The gut reaction to the jobs report was stock futures had a minor rise & the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond jumped 7 basis points to 3.94% (on thoughts of a strengthening economy). Dow had a good recovery in the last 2 months but has been sputtering in recent weeks trying go over 11K. If Treasury bond yield tops 4%, markets could be in trouble.

10-Year Treasury Yield Index - YTD

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