It wasn't quite the same as having 150,000 new monthly jobs created, or home sales jumping, or consumer and business confidence pulling out of the pits.
But this morning the Commerce Department issued its final revision of 2nd quarter GDP growth, and revised it up to 1.3% from the previously reported 1.0%. It's the first time one of these reports has not been revised down in quite some time.
Sure, 1.3% is not a huge change. And all this revision does is put the growth back to the disappointing 1.3% originally reported two months ago before it was revised down to 1.0% a month ago. And we know the economy slowed further in the 3rd quarter.
But I'd rather see it slowing from 1.3% in the second quarter than from the last report of only 1.0%. It makes it that much more possible that the economy may slide lower without going all the way into a recession.
And to top off the good news, the Labor Department reported that new unemployment claims fell by a big 37,000 last week, to 391,000 from the previous week's 428,000. That's the lowest level of claims since April.
The only negative aspect of those reports is that it sure removes the possibility of the Fed providing further stimulus via some form of QE3 any time soon.
That may not be good news for bonds.
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Yesterday in the U.S. Market.
The extreme volatility continued. After being smashed last week, the market was back to the upside by double-digits Monday and Tuesday, but ran into selling and a downside reversal yesterday.
The Dow was up 127 points in the first half hour and then began selling off, with the selling accelerating near the close.
The 30-stock Dow closed down 179 points, or 1.6%. But the rest of the market closed down even more sharply. And market breadth was terrible, with 6 times as many stocks down as up on the NYSE, and more than 5 times as many stocks down as up on the Nasdaq.