Nonfarm Payroll Beat

The Nonfarm Payroll Report (NFP) is widely believed to be the most important economic report in the U.S., or at least the one with the most sway over markets.

This morning's release showed a huge positive surprise, "positive" being many more jobs added than expected. There was a big revision down from the prior month, but most people don't pay attention to that - it's all about the headlines. So far, reactions in the markets have been subdued.

Over the past year, there has been a mostly positive reaction in the S&P 500 following a beat of any amount in the NFP number.

But this was just not any beat, it was a monster one. And when the NFP number beat by more than 100k, the SPY fund did not tend to react well.

Neither did the TLT bond fund:

Or the GLD gold fund:

Maybe investors have been worried enough about economic malaise that today's report will be taken as good news, especially in combination with the Fed's newly relaxed stance. Or maybe they'll reconsider during the day and worry about the inflation boogeyman. Who knows.

The table below shows the historical win rate from the market's open to the close 5 days later for the most popular ETFs we follow. HYG and JNK came out on top, with gains about 2/3 of the time, while some commodity-based funds brought up the rear.

Based on historical reactions, this kind of a number hasn't been good for just about anything other than high-yield bonds and more economically-sensitive funds.