There will be no rest for investors this week as they await a marquee report on the state of the U.S. labor market, along with biannual Congressional testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Further complicating things, investors will also be watching to see how stocks react to more attractive risk-free returns in the bond market after the yield on the 10-year Treasury note last week temporarily topped the 4% threshold, with many expecting it to climb even further.
Was January’s jobs number a ‘fluke’? On the economic data front, the most important question that investors will be looking to answer is whether January’s huge job gains continued in February. The U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs in January, according to the Labor Department, far outstripping expectations and setting in motion a market rethink on just how high the Federal Reserve will take interest rates in its effort to bring down inflation. Since then, weekly jobless benefit claims have continued to show few Americans filing for unemployment benefits, fueling expectations that another blockbuster gain in jobs could be due in the data for February next Friday, which in turn could force the Federal Reserve to resort to even more aggressive interest rate hikes, according to Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers, during a phone c …