Good morning. I apologize for the delay in today’s report. I have been on conference calls since I walked in the office this morning. Consequently, today’s report will be briefer than normal (which may be to your delight!). Equities hung in there yesterday with the Dow closing down 4 to 16,802, the S&P 500 closed flat to Wednesday at 1,946 and the Nasdaq climbed 8 to 4,430. But that’s ancient history now and let’s discuss what’s going on today. The Labor Department released its all-important Employment Situation Report showing 348,000 jobs were created in September with the unemployment rate dropping below 6% to 5.9%. The story has been good over time with jobs creation averaging 220,000 new jobs per month this year. That’s the best pace since the boom year 1999. This may be the data to once again start us up again. The S&P is trading up 17 as I write.

Oil ended mixed yesterday with WTI up 28¢ to $91.01 while Brent fell 74¢ to $93.42. This morning WTI is breaking the support its recently found around $90 trading down $1.46. I apologize for the redundancy but flat global demand, at best, and ample supplies are giving the bears confidence. With Saudi Arabia showing no intention of cutting production and giving up market share, it’s going to take some exogenous event to raise prices.

Natural gas fell a material 9.1¢ yesterday closing at $3.932 on the heels of a very bearish EIA weekly storage report which showed a 112 Bcf injection with the market expecting something more on the order of 108 Bcf. This was the largest single weekly injection of gas into storage for any September on record. Storage levels are now 11% below last year at this time and 12% below the 5 year average with 6 weeks left it the “injection season.” Prices are now back around that magic $3.90 level which just seems like a big magnet. This morning natty is up 3.8¢.  Have a good day.