It used to be that a weekly print below 300K in jobless claims was a big deal, but these days a print below 250K doesn’t even raise much of an eyebrow.  This week’s report was another example.  While economists were expecting first time claims to come in at 245K, the actual reading came in at 239K, marking the 6th time in the last seven weeks that claims printed below 250K.  This was also the 102nd straight week where claims came in below 300K.  To put the recent levels of jobless claims in perspective, initial jobless claims have been below 240K in four of the last seven weeks, but from 1973 through October 2016, they didn’t go below that level once!

While jobless claims remained low this week, the four-week moving average actually increased slightly, rising from 244.75K to 245.25K.  However, barring a reading above 260K next week, we should see another cycle low for this measure.

Finally, even with the impressive reading on the seasonally adjusted reading, the most impressive aspect of this week’s report was probably the non-seasonally adjusted level.  This week’s reading fell by 13.6K down to 246K.  For the current week of the year, this week’s reading is more than 125K below the average since 2000.  In fact, since the weekly claims release began in 1967, there has never been a lower reading for the current week of the year.  Impressive!

When it comes to market sentiment, the latest data from AAII shows a picture that is just about as neutral as it gets.  However, given the fact that the S&P 500 and Nasdaq are currently in the middle of seven-day winning streaks, one would expect a little bit more conviction.  As shown in the chart below, bullish sentiment this week came in at 33.09%.  This is the fifth straight week that bullish sentiment has been below 40%, and the 111th straight week that bulls have failed to take a majority, and that makes this the longest sub 50% run in bullish sentiment in the history of the AAII survey.  With bulls not even surpassing the one-third mark this week, the record streak looks set to continue for at least a little while longer.

Like the bulls, slightly less than a third (32.36%) of investors placed themselves in the bearish camp this week, but with stocks at record highs, you would expect a low level of bearish sentiment.

Finally, the only category of sentiment that was above one-third this week was neutral sentiment which came in at 34.55%.

After 36 all-time highs on Monday and 24 on Tuesday, Wednesday’s reading was 40.  So just under 10% of S&P 500 stocks hit all-time highs yesterday.

Below is yesterday’s full list of S&P 500 all-time highs.  A whopping 28.6% of Financial sector stocks hit all-time highs, meaning a good chunk of the sector has now recovered all of its Financial Crisis losses.