Daily Market Notes
Four Forecasters Had Canada's Sign Wrong by 75,000 Jobs and Its Unemployment Rate Exactly Right
Two scheduled releases ninety minutes apart, and in both the field that looked accurate was the one with cancellation inside it. Four forecasters put Canadian September employment between a 5,000 and a 9,200 gain; the economy shed 68,300 jobs, so every sign was wrong and every miss between 73,300 and 77,500 — while three of those same four had the unemployment rate exactly at 6.5 per cent. Michigan printed 46.3 against a 47.5 to 48.0 band, missing by two and a half band widths, and its headline consensus was out by 1.3 only because its two component forecasts broke by 5.8 and 1.4 in opposite directions. Also: the leveraged-fund prediction scored correct, and the 55,440 we carried uncategorised for nine days is identified by arithmetic.