Welcome to Total Wealth Insider!

The other day, my wife and I were watching the Today Show in the morning. The anchors were talking about Friday’s soon-to-be-released unemployment report for April.

The anchors were using adjectives like “catastrophic” and “horrific,” along with scary phrases like a “second Great Depression.”

No doubt about it, the jobless numbers were huge on Friday. Last month, roughly 14.7% of working-age Americans were without a job.

But my friend and fellow Total Wealth Insider contributor Brian Christopher sent this chart to our Profit Line subscribers. It shows weekly jobless claims — no less “horrific” — but it gives us a different perspective…

(Click here to view larger image.)

Yes, the number of people without a job is still big. But the downward week-by-week trend is what’s important.

This is where we go off track listening only to the mainstream media. Their job is to tell the big national stories. My job is to tell you the “story within the story.”

It’s a compelling one, too. As Brian pointed out, some experts think we could start seeing positive gains in the job numbers before this month is through.

From that perspective, the fact that the major indexes continue to hover at these levels — roughly halfway between the all-time highs in February and the lows in late March, despite an onslaught of bearish headlines — doesn’t seem as perplexing.

Stock prices tend to anticipate future events. If I’m right, the market is expecting this rapid decline in the jobless picture as the country reopens for business.

It doesn’t mean “Happy Days Are Here Again” forever. There’s always something else for the stock market to worry about.

But I believe the long-term challenge will be whether the economy can grow fast enough to justify the high valuations of many of these leading stocks within the S&P 500.

Six weeks ago, many companies had low stock prices, while analysts anticipated slower profit growth because of the virus.

Now these same companies have much higher stock prices, but analysts have yet to raise their profit estimates; the bad news is still coming in as companies report their first-quarter results.

But we’ll worry about that later. For now, I continue to expect the market to grind higher.

As for this week’s webinar, I discuss:

• The most recent news for Verra Mobility (Nasdaq: VRRM). (3:58)
• The great first-quarter results for CVS Health (NYSE: CVS). (6:25)
• What to expect from SmileDirectClub’s (Nasdaq: SDC) upcoming earnings report.  (8:20)

To watch the 11-minute webinar, click on the image below.

(Click here to watch the webinar.)

Click here to read a transcript.

I’ll be back with you next week! In the meantime, check out our resources if you haven’t already. We have a wealth of great information online, including our trading manual, special reports, FAQ and more!

Best of Good Buys,

Jeff L. Yastine
Editor, Total Wealth Insider