S&P 500 closed Tuesday 2/10 at 6942, down 0.3% # Real retail sales, adjusted for inflation, down, 🚨 delinquencies up [View all]

Last edited Tue Feb 10, 2026, 07:14 PM - Edit history (248)

RETAIL SALES fell after adjusting for inflation - more below

US small-business confidence slipped in January - more below (just a link)

US consumer delinquencies jump to highest in almost a decade, Bloomberg, 2/10/26 - more below (just a link)

2/10/26 6:00 PM ET - this Tuesday update will be somewhat below my standards because I have a busy morning to prepare for tomorrow. A report from the local newspaper wants me to explain a key Metro Transit (Twin Cities) bus route change, so I'm scrambling and really shouldn't be taking the time now to do this update but here goes anyway.


In the future I will only be doing these twice a week: Tuesday and Friday, unless it's really interesting.

10 Year TREASURY YIELD 4.15% on Feb 10, down 0.05 for the day (probably because the negative retail sales report increased the odds of near-term rate cuts). It was 4.27% on Feb 3. It was 4.19% on Friday 12/12 (It local-bottomed out at 3.95% 10/22/25, its lowest point since April.)
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5ETNX/
10 Year Treasury price: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ZN%3DF/

Bitcoin: $68,586 @ 5:31 PM Feb 10. It was $75,512 @ 6:50 PM ET Feb 3. It was $84,009 @ 944pm ET Friday 1/30. It was $95,401 @ 533p ET 1/16/26, It recently exceeded at last it's end of year 2024 closing level ($93,429), but it's back below the waterline on that metric, , It's in bear market territory, down more than 20% from it's $126,000+ all-time high in October (20% down from $126,000 is $100,800) ACTUALLY, it's down 45% from $126,000 (Cryptocurrencies trade 24/7) https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/

Next Fed rate decision: March 18 (last was January 28)
CME FedWatch tool (probabilities of various Fed interest rate moves) 1/30: 13% chance of a rate cut), 2/10: 20% chance
. . . https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html

The S&P 500 closed Tuesday February 10 at 6942, down 0.3% for the day,
and up 20.0% from the 5783 election day closing level,
and up 15.8% from the inauguration eve closing level,
and up 18.0% since the December 31, 2024 close
and up 1.4% Year-To-Date (since the December 31, 2025 close)
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EGSPC
(more below on the S&P 500 levels corresponding to the above, and also the Dow)


Market news of the day: https://finance.yahoo.com/

How to find the latest Yahoo Finance "stock market today" report if it's not at the finance.yahoo page (note that the headline displayed there does not include the "Stock Market Today" words, but the article itself does): click on
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22stock+market+today%22+site%3Afinance.yahoo.com&oq=%22stock+market+today%22+site%3Afinance.yahoo.com

If the link doesn't work for you,
Google: "stock market today" site:finance.yahoo.com

First I will briefly cover Monday. Then on to Tuesday

Monday February 9

S&P 500 closed Monday, 2/9/26 at 6965, up 0.47%. Dow up 20 points (+0.04%), to 50,136

The big jobs report with the headline non-farm payroll jobs and unemployment rate is Wednesday. It will also come out with the final benchmark revision of jobs from April 2024 thru March 2025. In the preliminary benchmark estimate, that was a downward 911,000 revision (note most of these months are in the Biden presidency, so it's not a good bulletpoint for us. But the next benchmark revision, for April 2025 through March 2026, all tRump years, will likely be large and downward as well. We'll have to wait until September to see the preliminary report on that).

The CPI inflation report comes out Friday.

--- SCROLLING DOWN THE PAGE, February 9 -----

I didn't bother with this today


Tuesday Feb 10



----- SCROLLING DOWN THE PAGE 2/10/26 ----

Wealth management stocks sink over fears of AI disruption


Coming Wednesday: The 'Super Bowl of jobs reports'

Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon calls software rout 'too broad' as Wall Street looks to steady investor nerves

EVs and aluminum plant fire take center stage on Ford earnings after the bell

Memory chip surging cost tanks profits across electronics companies

================================

CALENDAR

Recent and Coming Up, Reports (I'm also keeping February 2 and later ones for now, I put the older ones in reply #1
https://www.marketwatch.com/economy-politics/calendar

See Reply #1 to this thread for reports prior to February 2.

The government reports are all seasonally adjusted, as are most, if not all, of the non-government reports the media covers, so please don't post comments about how the numbers look good (or not as bad as expected) only because of Christmas season hires or Christmas shopping -- seasonal factors like that have been adjusted for

MONDAY FEB 02

# ISM manufacturing - January -

TUESDAY FEB 03

# ISM Services - January

WEDNESDAY FEB 04

# ADP employment (private sector workforce) - January. ADP processes payrolls for 20% of the private sector payroll employed, and estimates somehow the other 80%. It's a non-governmental report, so the report's timing is not subject to the government shutdown/startup schedule.

Private payrolls rose by just 22,000 in January, far short of expectations, ADP says, CNBC, 2/4/26
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143611175
The total was less than the downwardly revised 37,000 increase in December and below the Dow Jones consensus forecast for 45,000.

The ultimate source: https://adpemploymentreport.com/

Seasonal adjustment turned a 2.171 Million job loss into a 22,000 gain - details: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143611175#post15

Monthly, Not Seasonally Adjusted
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ADPMNUSNERNSA

Monthly, Seasonally Adjusted:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ADPMNUSNERSA


THURSDAY FEB 05

# JOLTS - Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey - December -

Job openings sink in December to lowest level since 2020
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/job-openings-sink-in-december-to-lowest-level-since-2020-151605057.html

. . . showed there were 6.5 million jobs open at the end of December. Economists polled by Bloomberg had projected 7.25 million openings for the month.

Layoffs and discharges, at 1.8 million, increased slightly from 1.7 million a month earlier.

The hiring rate, meanwhile, improved slightly from a month prior, reaching 3.3%. The quits rate, often seen as a barometer of workers' confidence to jump from their current post to search for greener pastures, also remained at 2%.

# Unemployment insurance claims
US weekly jobless claims rise by more than expected
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/live/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-sell-off-builds-as-tech-rout-continues-bitcoin-plunges-210019775.html
(and scroll way down)

Jobless claims for the week ending Jan. 31 increased by 22,000 to 231,000 claims, exceeding economists' forecasts, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
Continuing claims, a proxy for the total number of people receiving state unemployment benefits, increased to 1.84 million.

More on continuing claims for the week ending January 24 was 1,844,000, an increase of 25,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised down by 8,000 from 1,827,000 to 1,819,000.
* SOURCE URL: The CURRENT one is always at: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf . . . this release's permalink is at https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20260205
* Permalinks for the current one and recent previous ones: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases
. . . and search the page for "Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report"


FRIDAY FEB 06

# Consumer sentiment (preliminary) - February
Consumer sentiment hits highest level since August, but is down 11% from year ago
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumer-sentiment-hits-highest-level-since-august-but-down-11-from-year-ago-as-inflation-job-worries-weigh-155341347.html
SOURCE: https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/
GRAPH, 10 years: https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsr.pdf
GRAPH, 50 years: https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsh.pdf
It's definitely an uptick, but a very small uptick. It's at about the lowest point seen in the post-pandemic 2022 inflation peak, and definitely below the worst levels of the housing bubble and dot-com crashes.

"While sentiment is currently the highest since August 2025, recent monthly increases have been small — well under the margin of error — and the overall level of sentiment remains very low from a historical perspective. Concerns about the erosion of personal finances from high prices and elevated risk of job loss continue to be widespread," University of Michigan surveys of consumers director Joanne Hsu said in the release.
. . .
Friday's reading from the University of Michigan also showed a divergence based on exposure to the stock market, though the report noted responses to this survey were collected prior to the onset of the software-led tech sell-off that started earlier this week.

"Sentiment surged for consumers with the largest stock portfolios, while it stagnated and remained at dismal levels for consumers without stock holdings," Hsu said.

MONDAY FEB 09

Nothing


TUESDAY FEB 10

# NFIB optimism index, January

US small-business confidence slipped in January, Wall St. Journal, 2/10/26 (no paywall or gimmicks at this MSN-hosted article)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/smallbusiness/us-small-business-confidence-slipped-in-january/ar-AA1W33sy

# US consumer delinquencies jump to highest in almost a decade, Bloomberg, 2/10/26
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-consumer-delinquencies-jump-to-highest-in-almost-a-decade/ar-AA1W4vwC
I haven't had time to read this article, but title is sure gloomy.

# Employment Cost index, Q4 - Considered the best statistic on wages/salaries and benefits, and the Federal Reserve's favorite source on the same.

I'm sorry, but that reporter is coming tomorrow morning and I don't have time to unscramble this now and tell you whether compensation is keeping up with inflation or not. Here is the link to the latest BLS report: https://www.bls.gov/eci/

Some context:

The ECI shows changes in wages and benefits in a manner that fixes the composition of the workforce. This is important, particularly when there are large changes in employment, because these data are not subject to the same distortions as the monthly average hourly earnings series, which can artificially be increased when low-wage workers lose their jobs and drop out of the sample (as happened in 2020) or artificially be decreased when these same workers are hired back (as happened in 2021) [1].

By fixing workforce composition, the ECI provides a more accurate picture of what is actually happening to wages.

[1] The Pandemic’s Effect on Measured Wage Growth, The WHite House, 4/19/21 ((Biden era))
. . . Original link now gone, thanks to Krasnov: https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/04/19/the-pandemics-effect-on-measured-wage-growth/
. . . The Archive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220208080743/https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/04/19/the-pandemics-effect-on-measured-wage-growth/

# Import price index
This is another one I don't have time to look into now

# Retail sales - caution: not inflation-adjusted, so one gets a distorted view of increases in retail sales, when often most of that is simply due to price increases. It is seasonally adjusted.

RETAIL SALES DECEMBER over November: +0.0%, Inflation was 0.31%, so inflation-adjusted retail sales were down about 0.3% for the month

RETAIL SALES for the 12 month period through December (i.e. year-over-year): +2.4%, Inflation: +2.7%, so inflation-adjusted retail sales were down about 0.3% for the 12-month period

LBN Thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143614155

From the Source: https://www.census.gov/retail/index.html -- > https://www.census.gov/retail/sales.html :
Remember the below numbers are not inflation adjusted
. . . [] Advance Retail Sales: Retail Trade and Food Services (MARTSMPCSM44X72USN), Not Seasonally Adjusted: +10.9% == https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MARTSMPCSM44X72USN
. . . [] Advance Retail Sales: Retail Trade and Food Services (MARTSMPCSM44X72USS), Seasonally Adjusted: +-0.0% == https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MARTSMPCSM44X72USS
And so the seasonal adjustment process turned a 10.9% increase to 0.0% in December (remember it's the Christmas month ho ho ho)

CPI inflation: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0

WEDNESDAY FEB 11

# The big "First Friday" monthly BLS jobs report that produces the headline non-farm payroll jobs number and unemployment rate - January -- In December it was a tiny 50,000 gain and an unemployment rate of 4.4%.
Ultimate source of the latest release: https://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
. . This report will also include the annual benchmark revision to the non-farm payroll jobs numbers, in this case from April 1, 2025 through March 31, 2026. The preliminary revision we saw last September was a 911,000 downward revision for that 12-month period. Because these numbers were preliminary, the data time series https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0000000001?output_view=net_1mth were not updated for those numbers. It is my understanding that they will be revised this time.

[] Lower Immigration Projections Mean Lower Breakeven Employment Growth Estimates, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 8/28/25
The old number: 150,000 jobs per month needed to keep the unemployment rate stable
The new number: 57,000 +/- 25,000 at a 90% confidence interval (think Heinz 57 varieties)
FFI: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143563268#post4

[] ACCURACY OF JOBS NUMBERS -- # Payroll jobs number sampling error: +/- 136,000 at 90% confidence = 55,800 at 50% confidence. And the unemployed numbers are +/- 300,000 (and +/- 0.2% for the unemployment rate).
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.tn.htm
. . And, no Powell did not say the numbers are being fudged, but he did say they are significantly over-estimated (so the +/- 136,000 stuff above was applicable to a previous less volatile era) 12/10/25 -- https://www.democraticunderground.com/100220859756

THURSDAY FEB 12

# Unemployment insurance claims
* SOURCE URL: The CURRENT one is always at: https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf . . . this release's permalink is likely to be at https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/eta/eta20260212
* Permalinks for the current one and recent previous ones: https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases
. . . and search the page for "Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report"

# Existing home sales Jan.

FRIDAY FEB 13

# Consumer price index Jan.


. . .


The full calendar: https://www.marketwatch.com/economy-politics/calendar

Revised release dates for Bureau of Labor Statistics reports: https://www.bls.gov/bls/2025-lapse-revised-release-dates.htm

BEA.GOV news release schedule (they produce reports on the GDP, Retail Sales, PCE Inflation (the Fed's favorite inflation gauge), and Personal Consumption and Income: https://www.bea.gov/news/schedule

=============================================
The S&P 500 closed Tuesday February 10 at 6942, down 0.3% for the day,
and up 20.0% from the 5783 election day closing level,
and up 15.8% from the inauguration eve closing level,
and up 18.0% since the December 31, 2024 close
and up 1.4% Year-To-Date (since the December 31, 2025 close)

S&P 500
# Election day close (11/5/24) 5783
# Last close before inauguration day: (1/17/25): 5997
# 2024 year-end close (12/31/24): 5882
# Trump II era low point (going all the way back to election day Nov5): 4983 on April 8
# 2025 year-end close (12/31/25): 6845
# October 28 all-time-high: 6890.90, surpassed by December 24's all-time high of 6932.00

# Several market indexes: https://finance.yahoo.com/
# S&P 500: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EGSPC/
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EGSPC/history/
# S&P 500 futures: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/ES%3DF/

Bitcoin
Bitcoin ended 2024 at $93,429. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/
Bitcoin's all-time interday high: 126,198 on Oct. 6
Bitcoin's all-time closing high: 124,753 on Oct 6. (that's what Yahoo Finance shows, but cryptocurrencies trade 24/7)
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BTC-USD/history/

========================================================

I'm not a fan of the DOW as it is a cherry-picked collection of just 30 stocks that are price-weighted, which is silly. It's as asinine as judging consumer price inflation by picking 30 blue chip consumer items, and weighting them according to their prices. But since there is an automatically updating embedded graphic, here it is. It takes several, like 6 hours, after the close for it to update, like about 10 PM EDT.
(If it still isn't updated, try right-clicking on it and opening in a new tab. #OR# click on https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EDJI/ ).

The Dow closed Monday at 50,136, and it closed Tuesday at 50,188, a rise of 0.1% (52 points) for the day

https://finance.yahoo.com/
DOW: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EDJI/
. . . . . . https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EDJI/history/

DOW
# Election day close (11/5/24) 42,222
# Last close before inauguration day: (1/17/25): 43,488
# 2024 year-end close (12/31/24): 42,544
# 2025 year-end close (12/31/25): 48,063

DJIA means Dow Jones Industrials Average. It takes about 6 hours after the close to update, so check it after 10 PM EDT. Sometimes it takes a couple days (sigh)



I don't have an embeddable graph for the S&P 500, unfortunately, but to see its graph, click on https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/%5EGSPC/

While I'm at it, I might as well show Oil and the Dollar:

Crude Oil


US Dollar Index (DX-Y.NYB)


If you see a tiny graphics square above and no graph, right click on the square and choose "load image". There should be a total of 3 graphs. And remember that it typically takes about 6 hours after the close before these graphs update.
🚨 ❤️ 😬! 😱 < - - emoticon library for future uses