Weekly Market Commentary 03/10/2017

It probably would have taken a disastrous jobs report on Friday to dissuade the Fed from lifting interest rates at its upcoming March 14-15 policy meeting. But that’s one surprise that didn’t happen. Indeed, anything less than a mediocre report would have been a disappointment, given the advance notice provided by the payroll processor ADP earlier in the week, which estimated that a whopping 298,000 private-sector jobs were created in February. That was considerably stronger than what the consensus of economists expected, prompting many to upgrade their forecasts. As it turns out, the ADP estimate was overly optimistic, but the jobs report still exceeded expectations.