Jobs Report Shocker Headline Great Underbelly Nasty Here Is The Latest S P Forecast

Hey folks, welcome to verifiedinvesting.com. My name is Gareth Soloway, Chief Market Strategist here. In today's video, we're going to look at the latest data just released on the jobs market, the non-farm payrolls unemployment report just coming out. What are the markets doing in reaction to this? And does this tell us more about the forecast of the S&P? We'll look at the charts and look at the technical analysis as well. But let's first start with the non-farm payrolls report. Here it is, guys. You can see again, U.S. March 2026 non-farm payrolls beating by a large margin coming in at 178,000 jobs gained in March. That's better than the 65,000 jobs created forecast, all right? So much, much, much better data here. Now, this is the kicker though. You say, all right, well, that's great news. Isn't this great for the economy? Maybe not so much. Why? Because February, remember that number was minus 92,000 reported last month. It was revised lower to 133,000 jobs lost in February. And so again, this is the kicker, right? Is that if you think about it, what's the normal reaction of you and me? Well, if you're like me, you say, well, okay, they said we gained 178,000 jobs this month, but what will that number be revised down to next month? And last month it was a minus 41,000 additional jobs lost. So even if we just do apples to apples and say, okay, that number, let's subtract 41,000. Now you're back in the 130,000 jobs created, which again is good, but it's not as exceptional as this jobs number is. And then also we take it one step further and remember the last two years, at the end of those years, the jobs were revised down an additional almost 1 million. So really when we look at that number, 178,000, the initial reaction from the algos was to buy the S&P futures and these S&P futures shot higher and immediately came right back in and are now slightly negative from where we were because of this same psychological impact, which is we get these great jobs reports. Then you see them revised down the next month. Then at the end of the year, they're revised down even more. And so really probably we had an inline jobs number. That's the reaction. And that's why the markets are not really focusing too much. All right, let's take it one step further. What was the unemployment report? The unemployment number drops from 4.4%, which was the forecast and what it was last month to 4.3%. Now, what this tells us is that fewer people are essentially unemployed, right? It's higher. In theory, you would say that this is a good number, but it's not as clean cut as this. And the reason it's not as clean cut is because the labor market is so tough right now. I mean, you talk to graduates coming out of college, struggling to find jobs. A lot of people are leaving the workforce or leaving the we're looking for work market, right? And so essentially, if someone's unemployed and looking for work, they're counted as unemployed. But if someone decides to stop looking for work, then they're considered to be out of the labor market. So essentially, while 4.3% is a great number historically, and it's better than expected, I would argue that again, you might say, okay, well, how many people in the last month just said, you know what, I give up, I can't find any job. So I'm going to stop looking for work. And therefore, could that have been the reason, or at least partially the reason why the unemployment rate went from 4.4% to 4.3%. Lastly, all right, so again, the headline number that the media is going to talk about 178,000 jobs created. But there's one other underlying number that to me is not good. And that's this next number right here. Okay, so what do we have? We have, in general, you look at hourly earnings and hourly earnings are telling you what is the average person gaining in hourly earnings. And in this case forecast, and you can see it right here. All right, right here, forecast was 0.3% hourly earnings increase, it missed forecast and came in at 0.2% increase. All right, so that is lower in terms of people getting money or making money than what had been anticipated. Now, the reason why this is a negative is that when you have inflation, which already was spiking in February, now obviously with the oil surge spiking even more, and people are making a slower or less money than anticipated. What does that tell us? That's the literal definition of stag flation. And stag flation, my friends is a warning sign of not only a slowdown in the economy, but also increasing inflation, the worst scenario of all. So here we have this scenario where we have oil spiking, that's going to increase everything. And remember, it's not just energy, energy goes into everything. So oil is in plastic, oil is in, when a farmer cuts their wheat using a combine, they have to put diesel into that. Diesel has gone up massively. So eventually food prices are going to be going up. So all of this inflation, when oil goes up, it's all surmounting, it's everywhere in the system. And again, hourly earnings being only plus 0.2% versus 0.3% is again, something that is not the greatest to see. All right. So again, these are things that you have to just kind of monitor and really be aware of as we continue through. Now, the next thing I want to do is jump to the charts. As always folks, you know, I'm a chartist. I'm a technician, 27 years of trading based on chart analysis. My first five were horrible because I knew nothing about what I was doing. I basically was pissing in the wind, frankly. That's the extent, even the nice way of saying it, because I lost a lot of money. Granted, I didn't have a lot of money when I first started trading, but to me back then it was a lot. I had my first 10K account. That was it. I saved 10K with all my might. And then I just lost it. And I had to work three side jobs to replenish it and did that for years until I finally turned from a losing trader to a breakeven trader, and then eventually slowly into a profitable trader. And it is a long trek. I didn't have someone like myself that could help people. It was kind of just trying to figure it out on my own. All right. In any case, let's go to the charts and see what's going on. Here's the S&P futures chart. If we jump to this, you can see this is when the jobs data came out. We had a big pop. I mean, this was a big pop and look, it came all the way back in. So what happened here, by the way, this was algorithmic buying. So the headline number has the algos. They'll react initially and pop the market. And then essentially when people dissect it and essentially tell you guys what I just told you, then they say, wait a minute, it wasn't really that great. And the S&P futures are down slightly here. Now overnight, remember, so the key is here. So number one, stock market is closed today for observance of Good Friday, but the futures are open, I believe till 12 or 1 PM. And so we do get some data points. Number one, there's been no change in the Straits of Hormuz or the Strait of Hormuz, nothing going on there. We did hear that the U.S. is bombing some bridges and such in Iran. So there is stuff going on there, but nothing changes that has been material or a material impact to the latest information. And obviously that could change literally any minute now. Got to watch Truth Social. You got to watch the news and kind of monitor that. But the point is here from yesterday's close on the S&P, the futures are down slightly here. And again, just more than anything, just kind of no news is bad news, if you will, because it's more status quo of the Strait of Hormuz being closed, which is not good for the global economy or domestic economy. All right. So that's number one. But let's flip over to the S&P. Now, remember, a few days ago I told you I was buying with both hands and that was right at YouTube. It came out right here on the S&P. And what I love about this is yesterday we gapped lower and a lot of people said, oh, Gareth, you know, like, well, so number one, obviously I took some off the table on this two-day rally. I mean, literally the NASDAQ was up 6 percent. I mean, how do you not take some profits off the table? Number two, we gapped down and look, we closed green. I am still listening. And I want to be clear on this. The markets are not going to go straight up, right? They don't go straight up. So my guess is, you know, we could go like this, then we can go like this. And essentially, I still think we're probably going back here on the S&P before I start really heavily shorting the market again. But in essence, right now, the bullish bias is remaining. What I do want to be clear is that half of the upside that I predicted is already in the markets, right? So we're already up 4.5 percent or so from the- I mean, if we go to close, right, 4.25. But essentially I said 5 to 7 percent. I actually am leaning more towards the 7 percent marker right here. But essentially that only leaves about 3, 3.5 percent left on the charts in terms of further upside. And again, please understand, I don't see it being in a straight line. So again, up, then we came down, then we came up, then we could go like this. And the point is, as of now, I remain neutral to bullish in the near term. But understand, folks, that the charts are telling me that this is a short-term rally and that once we get into these levels, I'm going to turn heavily bearish again as the midterm bearish angle of this chart is very strictly in focus. And what I mean by that here, guys, is this parallel, right? So here in 2021's bull market, look, we came back to the low end of the parallel. And so while you have the midpoint of the parallel here, which gives us a bounce, and even this area will give us a bounce, this is probably where we're headed by year end or early 2027 on the S&P 500. And that would be a drawdown from the all-time highs. If we look at that, it would be basically a drawdown of about 20% on the S&P 500 when all is said and done. All right, you guys go have a great weekend. I will talk to you soon, maybe even do another video or two this weekend of updates on Bitcoin and crypto, maybe a gold and silver update. We'll take a look at all these other assets. As always, folks, thank you so much for tuning in. Appreciate the kind words as always. And again, I'll do my best to deliver the best insights out there. Have a good one and take care.