Jobless Claims Healthy

Weekly initial jobless claims once again stayed in its reasonably healthy range this morning, posting 259K jobless claims for the week. This is down 4000 claims from the unchanged number a week ago. The 4-week moving average is at a steady 261K.

This is interesting in light of yesterday’s JOLTS report, which posted nearly 6 million open job in the U.S. For sure there must be an aspect of part-time versus full-time work, because otherwise it’s hard for these numbers to jibe. Recall last week’s non-farm payroll report announced the unemployment rate is still below 5%, which indicated more or less “full employment” in the U.S.

ECB Keep Rates Unchanged

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi is speaking at this hour regarding the state of the European Union’s economy. Unsurprisingly, there was no change to interest rates, and Draghi said he expects “moderate, steady growth in real GDP” and that “risks to growth are tilted to the downside.”

Further, rates are expected to stay steady or go lower, with no word yet regarding whether or not the ECB’s QE program — buying back bonds much the way the U.S. did for years — will be expanded. We may see an update to this soon.

Tech Companies Take the Stage: AAPL, TWTR

Apple’s AAPL annual September hardware event generated some well-received headline news copy yesterday, mostly with the announcement that the new iPhone 7 has done away with the headphone jack. This presumably brings to the fore Apple’s Beats headphones company that it purchased last year, which figures to employ a new cordless headphone system for iPhone upgrades.

Aside from this aspect and an improved camera system in the iPhone 7, this new upgrade remains very close to recent iPhone models. Also, while the iPhone brings in the lion’s share of revenue for Apple, there was other news from yesterday’s event, including a new partnership with Nintendo. For more information, check out this article from yesterday afternoon: Here’s Everything We Learned from Apple’s Event

Twitter TWTR is holding a board meeting today, and based on comments earlier from co-founder Evan Williams regarding the company being possibly open to acquisition, might hold a significant level of interest for investors today. Besides Twitter’s long-term growth numbers conjuring question marks among analysts following the company, roughly 25% of Twitter’s revenues are locked up in stock-based compensation. Will Twitter need to sell units to bring this down? Stay tuned.