Before we get into this month's same store sales, every Thursday we have weekly job claims and since the government has a hard time messing with these numbers they might actually be somewhat accurate - we went over 400K last week and now have jumped to over 450K. Remember, all these bankruptcies in retail and restaurants we've been pointing out the past few months - those are all new (future) Walmart employees. Along with the auto makers, along with the airlines, along with the financial companies. Only in the monthly government reports do we see "job growth" in those areas - laughable.

But don't you worry, Wall Street constantly tries to find "hope" and tries to guess the "turn is here" and anticipates the pickup - they've been doing that for nearly a year now and will continue to try to find a sliver of hope in every data point - remember we rallied 300+ points just 2 days ago on a "better than expected" ISM number. That's the policy - ignore the bad reports and cling to the "better than expected" report (even when that report shows contraction) Hence your "it's time to buy airlines, retailers, financials, and consumer discretionary" rallies - the hottest parts of the market the past few weeks. (Apr 14: Stuff I've Been Negative on Since Last Fall) I continue to charge that consumer discretionary spending is just in the early innings of a long tail spin - I'll have a post up later about Whole Food Markets (WFMI) which has been one of my favorite shorts (I can't take advantage of it but I've pointed this out as a case example to short many times) and it's horrid numbers out later.

• The number of newly laid off people signing up for jobless benefits last week climbed to its highest point in more than six years as companies cut back given the faltering economy.
• The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications filed for unemployment insurance rose by a seasonally adjusted 7,000 to 455,000 for the week ending Aug. 2. The increase left claims at their highest level since late March 2002.
• Among the companies announcing job cuts in late July or early August were: General Motors Corp., Weyerhaeuser Co., and Starbucks Corp. Bennigan's restaurants owned by privately held Metromedia Restaurant Group, are closing, driving more people to unemployment lines.

Today we have same store sales numbers - there are a few bright spots but I like to focus on "Middle Class" stocks to get an idea of what is going on there instead of reading Kool Aid government reports. Some favorite trend indicators are these 3 Kohl's (KSS), Target (TGT) and Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF). The first two are middle class America true and true (remember we outlined in December that this country is going to lose many of its Target shoppers as they are forced to move to Walmart) (Dec 26: Target Shoppers Turning into Walmart Shoppers) and the last is an example of all things conspicuous consumption in the teenage (and early to mid 20s set). But mostly its teenagers taking parents money and wildly overspending for status symbols.