The market finally broke its losing streak and ended the session mixed. The Nasdaq continued its leading role recently and advanced almost 1% while both the Dow and the S&P500 closed lower fractionally. The news on the economic front was mostly better than expected. The productivity figure for Q1 was revised slightly higher to 2.6% from 2.5%. At the same time, labour costs climbed at a revised 2.2% pace, matching the previous estimation and down from a 4.7% increase in Q4 2007. The ADP Employment report, which is from a survey to private firms, showed an increase of 40K in the private nonfarm employment while economists expected a drop of 30K. In a related note, Challenger, Gray & Christmas mentioned in a statement today that firing announcements rose to 103,522, the highest since December 2005. While the ADP and the Challenger reports were pointing to different directions, traders seemed to simply ignore both and focused instead on the government nonfarm report on Friday. Finally, the ISM service report also came at 51.7 compared to 51.0 expected. Taking a closer look, we can see that Business Activity/Production increased to 53.6 from 50.9 in the previous month; New Orders increased to 53.6 from 50.1; New Export Orders increased to 54.0 from 48.5; Employment decreased to 48.7 from 50.8 and Imports decreased to 48.0 from 50.0.

Commodities continued to face selling pressure. Financials, despite an early sell-off in Lehman Brothers and a potential downgrade in two bond insurers, finished the session modestly lower. Technologies, transportations and consumer cyclicals were among the noticeable winners. The CRB commodity index continued to retreat and ended lower by around 3 points. Treasuries reversed from early gains following Bernanke’s remarks about inflation while the US dollar was higher against most major currencies. The VIX moved higher by another 3% after reaching the highest level in more than one month earlier. The market internals continued to improve while the volume was also on the heavy side.