Good Thursday A.M. on this last day of May,

Bonds continue to give back some of Tuesday’s improvement little by little. The 10-yr at 2.83 and mortgage bonds -3bps. Data today (unemployment claims and Chicago PMI to pick two) was in line to a bit stronger so no help for bonds there. There is nothing much going on today, as I am sure traders are coiling up for tomorrows jobs report to be able to strike. Markets are expecting 185k new jobs and that hourly  wages ticked up by .2%. The latter is certainly the more important of the two from a trading standpoint as the new jobs and especially the unemployment rate tends to be manipulated by our gig economy. .2% wage growth is right in the sweet spot so while it may be tough to beat, it shouldn’t be too tough to reach (last month wages grew by .1%). The mess in Italy is not going away, it is just not in the forefront right now as the snap elections won’t happen until September, so not an immediate need for traders to address. The DOW is down 200 points and this could help bonds, if the situation continues. All in all, I think locking before end of day to avoid tomorrow early a.m. volatility is wise.

Speaking of a gig economy… (horrible segue) estimates for how large this segment of our economy is (think Uber, Lyft, Post Mates, etc.) are now between 20 percent to 30 percent of the U.S. workforce. Last year, Intuit, which owns TurboTax, estimated that 34 percent of the workforce earned money in gig pursuits and projected that this could rise to 43 percent by 2020.

Make today great!