PipStop

Some days I feel like a complete maniac. Today is one of those days and I think it's because of my excitement with this new month. It's the beginning of summer - although it's absolutely freezing in Vancouver right now (9 Celsius), I have a lot on my mind, I'm probably not sleeping enough, AND we just had Non-Farm today.

There was initial movement when the data was released and since, as I look a cable, it kept moving up for just over 150 points. Many thanks to Harold Fretheim and Nikhil Patel who tag teamed the special webinar this morning.

If you were the one of 31 who were online, good for you. If you weren't, I'm sure we'll have more next month, as we make this a regular event.

Now, if you missed the entire thing, we've actually recorded about 1.5 hours of the last part of it, so you can take a peek in.

As I've been scanning news since:

- I see that a U.S. Treasury Department official says the US is not in a recession.

- Americans are $1.7 trillion poorer through the first quarter of 2008 - although an expert says it may not affect consumer spending as Americans "are spending everything in their wallet and borrowing more." I hope you, yes you, aren't trading on credit ...

- Shobhana Chandra a Bloomberg reporter provides the most multi-faceted report I've seen yet, this morning, in covering the loss of jobs and increased unemployment rate. The unemployment rate is exacerbated by youth unemployment, and she has some sentiment from both U.S. presidential candidates as well. Which got me to thinking, we've all got to start throwing our ideas into the cauldron, because I don't think anyone really as an "answer."

- Didn't it just seem like it was a few weeks ago that we were hearing and talking about oil hitting $100 a barrel? Now it's above $134 and Morgan Stanley is predicting it will hit $150. I guess the inevitable question is - when will it hit $200?

And subsequently the two currencies I'm looking at - euro and cable have shot up. In the special Non-Farm session we're observing the euro. I'm looking at cable and by eyeballing it, it's shot up about 80 points or so. And it keeps pushing up.

By the way, the 49,000 jobs lost in May puts the jobless rate at 5.5% - which is higher than it's been since Oct. 2004.

One observation that I'm making while being part of this session is the fact that it isn't as interactive as the regular Online Training Rooms.

Obviously we're using the Adobe Connect platform here for this, which is different from what is ordinarily used, but we've got to figure out the best way to pass the microphone around to any attendee who wants to make a comment or ask a question.

It's bothering me, but we'll figure it out.

It's been a long time in hibernation.

But I've felt for a long time that we need to bring back Online Trading Room sessions during "high interest" times. Today's U.S. Non-Farm Payroll Data release is such time. The room is actually going right now and Trading Coach Harold Fretheim just passed the baton to Nikhil Patel - marrying fundamental and technical perspectives together.

We're about 6 minutes from the bottom of the hour when the data will be released so we'll see what happens!