Pre-Market Flat on Consistently Low Jobless Claims

Thursday, August 6th, 2026

Pre-market futures are moderate and mixed this morning, following a Hump Day trading session that felt pretty similar. After two days of surging major market indexes — the S&P 500 is up +200 points in the last five trading days — investors seem to be awaiting a new catalyst to push markets along.

Iran is currently striking a peace deal… with Oman, the country that controls the peninsula opposite Iran in the Strait of Hormuz. From this vista, it looks like a double-edged sword: finally parties are discussing a new methodology for keeping the Strait open for shipping 20% of the world’s oil & gas, but they do so with Iran assuming greater control over the international shipping channel. More to come, undoubtedly…
 

New Jobless Claims Sub-200K Again

Thursday morning’s Weekly Jobless Claims continue to demonstrate the most optimistic of all U.S. employment gauges: Initial Claims of +199K is below the +204K anticipated, and basically in-line with the +198K from the prior week. This is the first time the 4-week average new jobless claims has been below +200K since before the Covid pandemic, averaging +196K claims per week over that stretch.

Continuing Claims, at 1.801 million, did cross back over the 1.8M mark for the first time in three weeks, but this is still historically low. Consider that, in 2025 — basically from Easter through Christmas — we saw between 1.9M-1.96M longer-term jobless claims per week, without ever touching the psychologically important +2 million. Again, these show a domestic labor force in very good shape, although “gig economy” options, depending on your state’s unemployment payouts, may be distorting these numbers to a certain extent.
 

SpaceX Lockup Expires Today

Today, the lockup period for early investors in SpaceX SPCX, both before and after the company’s IPO on June 12th of this year, expires. How many shareholders will be taking gains on the high-concept (but highly leveraged) rocket and space development giant? We’re talking roughly 900 million shares, by the way, some of which look to book up to 20x gains on their original investment. Shares are flat right now and -18% from their debut ($135 per share at the IPO) to its current +$108.

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