BigTrends.com Weekly Market Outlook – February 15th, 2016

As has been the case for a while, the market threw investors another curveball last week. That is, stocks initially acted as if they were finally going to tip over the edge of the cliff, but right before they reached the point of no return they bounced back just enough to offer a glimmer of hope.  

As encouraging as Friday's strong bounce was (and the pre-open strength on Tuesday is), the fact of the matter is ,we're technically still closer to the aforementioned breakdown than we are to a rebound.Given the market's recent erratic nature, however, we continue to be open minded to either possible outcome.

We'll slice and dice it below as we always do, right after a closer look at last week's and this week's economic news.

Economic Data

We didn't get a great deal of economic data last week, and very little of what we got was of any real interest. There were a couple of items, however, at least worth mentioning.

One of them was last month's retail sales numbers. They rolled in much better than originally anticipated, with overall retail sales growing 0.2% in January, and with retail sales not counting automobiles advancing 0.1%.Economists were expecting those numbers to be 0.0% and -0.1%, respectively.Even more interesting was the fact that December's dire numbers of -0.1% (for both measures) ended up getting revised to 0.2% and 0.1% growth, respectively.

Retail Sales Chart

Source: Thomson Reuters

The upward revision of December's numbers as well as January's beat suggests the economy isn't as close to a recession as some observers have suggested.On that note…

The other item of interest from last week was December's job openings, or JOLTS.The reading of 5.607 million was not only above estimates, but it was a near-record reading, implying employers are having a tough time filling positions. That's a definite plus for the job market (although some are arguing employers aren't actually looking to fill the advertised positions).