The BLS released their August JOLTS Report and it shows job openings decreased to 10.1 million.
The number of job openings decreased to 10.1 million on the last business day of August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Hires and total separations were little changed at 6.3 million and 6.0 million, respectively. Within separations, quits (4.2 million) and layoffs and discharges (1.5 million) were little changed. This release includes estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires, and separations for the total nonfarm sector, by industry, and by establishment size class.
It isn’t surprising, the summer season is over and it is likely that a few retired boomers had to go back to work to make extra money to compensate for that 8.3 percent inflation rate. The cost of food, energy, housing, and other items has been very high.
The Federal Reserve continues on a path to raise interest rates to help contain inflation but we won’t know the effect of that activity for a few more weeks.
In the meantime, we continue to buy more long PUTS on home building stocks and the XHB ETF which we expect to correct over the next 12 to 18 months. For XHB, our desired strike PUT price is $55 and we are counting on XHB dropping below that level by January 19 2024.
We’ll keep you posted but in the meantime, stay tuned and stay solvent…
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