InvestingChannel

The rumor making the rounds today is that Friday’s Employment Report will exceed estimates in a big way. The previous month’s report of only 74K new jobs created may have been an outlier, meaning Friday’s number, estimated at 183K new jobs, will be moved up to accommodate adjustments to previous data. In other words, December’s data will be averaged in with January to allow for seasonal assumptions made by the BLS. We’ll see.

Jobless Claims dropped to 331K vs prior data revised higher to 351K. Despite the decline, the four-week average still moved higher to 334K.

On the other hand, the Trade Deficit increased to -$38.7 billion vs -$36 billion expected, and prior -$34.6 billion, or an increase of 12%. Bulls certainly chose to ignore this, but the drop will likely make for revisions in GDP data soon enough. Industrial Productivity (1.3%) was positive while Costs (-1.6%) were negative. That should help margins or mean employees are making less.

Overseas, the ECB made no changes in interest rates and kept up the pace in regards to purchasing Distressed Government Debt. This kept bulls reasonably happy.

In the U.S., earnings news focused on a great report from Walt Disney (DIS) and basically ignored a disastrous report from Twitter (TWRT). Also Kohl’s (KSS) announced a future reduction in revenue and earnings, which should have hurt the Retail Sector ETF (XRT) but it rallied. Today's data, like those stated above, only increases the likelihood that a much better than expected employment will be reported tomorrow.

Gaining sectors included: Financials (XLF), Energy (XLE), Retail (XRT), Semiconductors (SMH), REITs (IYR), Technology (XLF), Industrials (XLI), Homebuilders (ITB) Emerging Markets (EEM), EAFE (EFA), Europe (VGK), Brazil (EWZ), China (FXI), Oil (USO), and Commodity Tracking ETF (DBC).

Declining sectors included: Yen (FXY), Bonds (TLT), and Agriculture (DBA).

Today we featured a short video on Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) from both weekly and daily chart perspectives.

Volume Thursday was much lighter on this melt-up while breadth per the WSJ was quite positive. The market is no longer short-term oversold.

Our staff also puts together the daily top 20 ETF market movers by percentage change in volume for gainers, decliners and emerging volume. This is a tool that investors can use to shorten their search for suitable ETFs, without being dominated by typical high volume issues or leveraged and/or inverse ETFs.

Below are chart presentations for daily top 5 ETF market movers, rising and falling, by percentage change in volume for each category. To permit better discovery inverse or leveraged issues are not included. Market movers are a tool investors can use to shorten their search for suitable ETFs, without being dominated by the usual high volume issues.

Charts are either daily or weekly . Simple Moving Averages are 5 (red) & 10 (green). Proprietary high (HI) and low (LO) indicators can, but not always, indicate a reversal in the trend is at hand. Find out how you might profit by signing up to be a premium member now. Follow us on twitter and become a fan of ETF Digest on facebook .