Tag Archives: ADP

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

The 8 Announcements Bank Investors Must Watch This Week

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By Jessica Alling, The Motley Fool

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In this series, we’ll explore the data announcements and events that may impact the performance of bank stocks during the upcoming week.

This past week was a big week for economic announcements, and though there will be plenty of data released this coming week, bank investors should note that the information released this week may have a bigger effect on how your stocks perform. The announcements will largely come on Wednesday and Thursday, so be prepared for a lot of movement late in the week. Let’s take a look at what’s going to be announced, what banks may be affected the most, and what you should look out for in the coming days.

Wednesday

  • Bank Reserve Settlement — the Federal Reserve has target dates every two weeks on which the nation’s banks must meet their capital requirements. Since some banks may have to scrounge up capital from other banks, the Federal Fund Rate may be affected as banks are willing to pay whatever it takes to meet its threshold. A bank not meeting the Fed’s reserve requirements doesn’t mean it’s in trouble, but it can signal poor reserve management, which is not a favorable sign to investors. Based on their fourth-quarter capital ratios, Bank of America , Citigroup , and JPMorgan were the top three capitalized banks of the nation’s five largest, with 9.25% for B of A and 8.7% for C and JPM.
  • MBA Purchase Applications— a weekly look at the mortgage application activity from the Mortgage Banker’s Association. It is important for bank investors to keep an eye on mortgage activity, since loans are a primary driver of a bank’s profitability. Mortgage king Wells Fargo produced the largest percentage of mortgage originations in the third and fourth quarters of 2012, propelling it to a $19 billion profit for the year. If mortgage activity continues to trend downward, bank will have a harder time contending with the continued pressure in net interest margins, which has mostly been offset by non-interest fees, like mortgage origination fees.
  • Federal Reserve’s Beige Book— produced two weeks before the FOMC‘s monetary policy meeting, the Fed’s beige book provides evidence of the economy’s condition, which influences the Fed’s interest rate policy. Interest rate changes are one of the most influential movers of the markets, and are of particular importance to banks. The recent release of the last FOMC meeting’s minutes sent the banks into a tailspin when it was revealed that members of the committee supported ending the current QE stimulus program early.
  • ADP Employment Report — released monthly, ADP releases data that indicates employment and wage trends, including any wage inflation insights. The release of the ADP report starts of the rest of the week’s employment data announcements, and as employment data can have a big effect on investor confidence it’s important to every bank stock out there.

Thursday

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Unemployment Preview: How ADP, Challenger, and Others May Change Unemployment Expectations

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By 24/7 Wall St.

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This is an unusual month because, due to a strange calendar in February, the monthly employment situation report by the U.S. Labor Department did not come on the first Friday of the month. This Friday will mark the key Unemployment Report from the Labor Department and we have many economic releases which will act as telegraphs ahead of that formal release. We have the formal estimates for the Employment Situation at the end because there are so many economic releases which investors and traders use as a harbinger for each month’s report.

Today’s ISM report for the non-Manufacturing segment rose to the highest reading in a year to 56.0, but the employment component was fell marginally to 57.2 in February from 57.5 in January.

On Wednesday morning around 8:15 AM we will get to see the ADP Employment Report for February. The consensus is 173,000 in new private sector payrolls versus 192,000 in January. The ADP national employment report comes from a subset of ADP records from about 400,000 domestic businesses which employ about 24 million workers in a ll private industrial sectors.

At 2:00 PM on Wednesday we will get the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book that was made in the two weeks ahead of the last FOMC meeting. This is older data, so do not expect it to change the unemployment and payrolls data.

On Thursday at about 7:30 AM comes the Challenger Job-Cut Report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. which is based upon corporate layoffs based on mass layoff data from state departments of labor. As a reminder, this is more volatile and does not account for changes inside employers.

The weekly jobless claims report from the Labor Department will come out on Thursday at 8:30 AM. Bloomberg is calling for a reading of 355,000 versus 344,000 from last week’s preliminary figure. We would note that the numbers have been coming sometimes way off the estimates and the trend has been lower of late.

Non-Farm Productivity and Unit Labor Costs will come out on Thursday at 8:30 as well, but we would caution that this is a measurement for the fourth quarter of 2012. That means it has no influence other than productivity. The more productivity that gets milked out of the same number of workers ultimately means that businesses can hire fewer new workers because they can get more output from the same workers for virtually the same price minus the investment costs.The prior productivity report showed a drop of 2% and Bloomberg is looking for this to be a drop of -1.6%.

The formal Employment Situation from the Labor Department for the month of February will be released at 8:30 AM on Friday. Perhaps the biggest caveat for investors is that the consensus can change or the unofficial whisper numbers can change based on the other numbers coming out ahead of the number. Bloomberg has the following estimates for February:

News, Politics, Government

How Fast is US Job Growth?

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By Karl Smith, Contributor According to the official payroll statistics job growth has been stuck in neutral for going on two years now, average about 150K jobs per month. Nonetheless Americans seem to be growing more optimistic about the economy I’ve suggested before that the first of several rounds of upward revisions to Job Growth and likely GDP growth will begin next month. Despite their official nature the early stats we get are essentially forecasts. Technically, we term them estimates since they refer to events which have already happened. However, from the analysts point-of-view they might as well be forecasts since the actual measurement of those events in some cases has not even begun. The the direct count of workers covered under employment insurance in 2012 will not begin until March. Reporting documents for the 2012 Economic Census, which will constitute much of the final bedrock of the GDP estimates of 2007 – 2012 are not due in until Feb 12th of this year. Nonetheless, the estimates are usually pretty good. Major trouble only strikes at turning points – recall the large miss on the collapse of GDP in the final months of 2008. And, so it happens we have some reasonably stark divergences between current estimates Interestingly there has been a fair bit of swapping around. ADP went from the fastest growing to the slowest, and household from the slowest to the fastest. In theory the Quarterly Census is the “gold standard” as it is based off of unemployment insurance estimates. The payroll series is ultimately benchmarked to that same source data each March. So, we can feel reasonably confident that Payroll will be revised upwards to run closer to to Quarterly Census. However,  whether quarterly census continues to convergence on the very optimistic numbers from the household series remains to be seen. As a note, some bloggers have asked why we don’t see more construction jobs in the data. Its worth noting that ADP is estimating a stronger pick-up in construction employment than the payroll series, at least right now.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

CIO-plus Series: Interview with CIO & Corporate VP of Product Development of ADP, Mike Capone

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By Peter High, Contributor Automatic Data Processing’s Mike Capone is someone who has long had a foot in information technology and a foot in the business.  He has a bachelor’s degree in computer science, but he also has an MBA.  He spent time as a vice president of IT at ADP, but he went on to be a General Manager of a global HR & payroll outsourcing business within the company.  In July 2008, he became ADP’s first ever global Chief Information Officer.  When he took on that role, he did so as a business executive would, however.  He pushed IT ever closer to the rest of the organization.  He developed a mandate for innovation during the heart of the economic malaise.  He also accompanied sales executives on sales calls with customers, and pushed his team to do the same.  In so doing, IT’s value to the company grew.  Therefore, in the second half of 2012, Capone added the role of Corporate Vice President of Product Development to his CIO title, adding a very business-centric role to his one in IT.  His is an example of an IT executive who successfully amplifies the value of IT to the point where it is only logical that he take over a key business role.  As Capone points out in my interview with him, nearly all ADP products have IT components to them, so having an executive who oversees both worlds provides tremendous synergy and efficiency.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

News, Politics, Government

ADP: Dec. Hiring Shot Up To 215K, As Businesses Withstood Fiscal Cliff

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By Abram Brown, Forbes Staff U.S. companies added more jobs than expected last month, a signal that businesses may have been more resilient in the face of political uncertainty that previously believed. The private sector created 215,000 new jobs in December, a new report from payroll giant ADP shows. And November’s figure was revised higher to […]
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

VGT, INTC, MA, ADP: ETF Inflow Alert

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By ETFChannel.comLooking today at week-over-week shares outstanding changes among the universe of ETFs covered at ETF Channel, one standout is the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (AMEX: VGT) where we have detected an approximate $41.4 million dollar inflow — that’s a 1.7% increase week over week in outstanding units (from 35,940,843 to 36,540,843). Among the largest underlying components of VGT, in trading today Intel Corp (NASD: INTC) is up about 1.1%, MasterCard Inc (NYSE: MA) is off about 0.1%, and Automatic Data Processing Inc. (NASD: ADP) is lower by about 0.2%. For a complete list of holdings, visit the VGT Holdings page »
Source: Forbes Markets