Shares of Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) responded poorly to the latest ADP employment report again suggesting that the market continues to have doubts about Friday's jobs numbers.



Chart Courtesy of StockCharts.com

Earlier this week we noted that Manpower shares were acting poorly. On Tuesday, they bounced back some. But on Wednesday, they headed for what could be new lows.

The recent swoon came in response to the latest ADP employment data which showed less than 120,000 new private sector jobs were created. Thursday's jobless claims number may add more fuel to the fire, especially if it shows further weakness.

Manpower is also a leading jobs search firm in Europe, which may be part of the reason for the weak performance. Europe is indeed in deep economic trouble, especially countries like Spain where unemployment is at 24%.

The problem for Manpower is that its 20-day moving average has now crossed below its 50 and its 200-day moving averages. The stock's price, thus, has a lot of people above the Wednesday price who may have bought at higher prices.

That means that any kind of negative suprise on Thursday and/or Friday will likely lead to more selling. If that's what happens, then we can also say that the stock was a correct predictor of the jobs number. Joe-Duarte.com is your own personal trading plan, updated daily. "Market Timing For Dummies" and "Trading Futures for Dummies" offer excellent ways to put together such a plan.

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