Yesterday was yet another consolidation type day. After surging 200 points on Monday, and ahead of today’s ADP report, investors took to the sidelines. Volume was barely a billion shares on the NYSE and edged over 2 billion on the NASDAQ. I wouldn’t put too much blame on the fairly negative economic reports on Personal Income & Spending, Factory Orders, or Pending Home Sales. Sure, all of the numbers were disappointing, but the market didn’t rally because the US economy suddenly looked better on Monday. To the contrary, it was Europe that looked like things weren’t as bad as they had seemed. That put pressure on the Dollar, which improves the outlook for trade and helped raise commodity prices, easing some of the deflationary talk. Monday’s rally wasn’t based on a stronger domestic expectation. The concern is about jobs, and we’re headed for three straight days of jobs data, starting with the ADP report today. ADP is expected to be looking for 30,000 private sector jobs after seeing just 13,000 in June. Tomorrow we’ll get weekly claims and then on Friday we’ll get the big monthly data for July. It’s not that expectations are running high. It’s just that we need to see enough jobs created to not lose ground. With that focus in mind, there is risk with this number. The S & P has retraced just over half of the entire decline from the April high to the June low. What moves us from here will require some solid data. Just remember, August is associated with peaks and October with troughs.