Today, at 8:21 am, 9 minutes before the official BLS claims release, we received an update from Stone McCarthy which had a rather starting subject line: "Claims Out Early 361,000 -6,000." The email body essentually said what everone would find out was precisely the case subsequently: "Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance fell 6K to a level of 361,000 for the week ending August 4th. The prior week's level was revised to 367K (previously 365K). SMRA's estimate anticipated a level of 365K for last week's claims. The Bloomberg survey's median estimate was 370K, and individual estimates ranged from 359K to ... (full story)