 Unemployment claims remain high as the coronavirus continues to grip the US economy. The Labor Department released its weekly jobless claims report today, and it shows another 900,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits last week. That is slightly down from the 926,000 new claims filed the previous week, but the still historically high numbers show jobs are still getting cut nationwide as a result of this pandemic. So it all comes, of course, as stocks continue to rise. Yesterday, investors placed more bets on additional coronavirus-related economic relief from the new Biden administration. For more on this, let us bring in Melissa Armo. She is the founder and owner of the stock swoosh and joins us now to make sense of these numbers. So, of course, the first kind of umbrella question is, what are the factors driving these numbers? Well, there's two things that are driving the market higher. And the market did make annual all-time highs yesterday in the S&P, which was really amazing. When you think of the run that the markets had ever since COVID hit, which is we're getting almost to the one-year anniversary, it's astronomical to me. So there's two reasons the market rallied yesterday. One is because the market is expecting with Biden in that there's going to be more stimulus and that the stimulus is going to be significant, and that it's going to help people, and therefore they will go out and spend that money in the economy. The second reason the market rallied yesterday and made new highs, which probably many people may not know unless they're trading the stock market, is that Netflix had earnings and blew out the earnings yesterday. As you know, many people are watching Netflix. So they had a huge number of added subscribers. So stock ran 100 points. That is a huge move for the stock. That made brand new all-time highs. That sector, Amazon, Netflix, all that sector that moves the market and so that lifted the market. And again, today we're flirting with the highs. So people are investing their money in the market. And one of the reasons is they're optimistic that things are going to improve. Yeah, the markets are continuing their upward trajectory, Melissa, as you know. And it just reminds me of the fact that President Trump, the former president, often claimed that the minute that his successor took office, the market would crash. Obviously, we're not seeing that. And I never expected that we would. But let me ask you, so that's the market, what is the current state of the U.S. economy? You mentioned the stimulus. How is that going to revive the U.S. economy? Well, the stimulus is a big, big rollout. I don't know if they're going to get all of it passed, to be honest with you. There are so many things involved with spending money. The question is, is Congress going to pass it? One of the important things for regular people to realize, especially people that are out of work, is one of the things in the stimulus is to increase the unemployment extra $300 back to $400. Member last year was at $600 extra week. Then they dropped it down in December to $300. So it's going to be bumped up $100 a week. If that gets passed, and that will help people out of work. The other thing that's in that program to help people that are unemployed, which you saw today, the numbers are still $900,000. That's a big number, is that they're going to extend the mortgage for closure, deadline, and the evictions until September 2021. If again, this gets passed, that would need 20 months from March of 2020 through September 2021. If they extend that, that would need 20 months for people really didn't have to pay rent. While that's good for people unemployed, I think it's bad for people that have mortgages on these commercial properties like the landlord. So there are, there's different aspects of the economy here that are working. Some are working in some people's favor. Some are not working in other people's favor. I think ultimately the idea of trying to drive the economy forward really comes down to getting people back to work. While the stimulus plan is a great idea to help people out temporarily, they're also going to try to do the $1,400 checks, which they wanted to do last year, and then that wasn't passed through Congress either. It's a band-aid on a bigger problem, which is these unemployment claims that come out week over week. These numbers are way too big. And if people don't get back to work, ultimately I think it is going to be a problem in the economy. We're not seeing it in the market right now. We're not seeing it in the economy as far as how what people are spending in some of these retail stores like Target made brand new all-time highs the other week and some of these other stores. But people can't not work for what will be almost two years when you think about it, 20 months. I mean, that is a long time, a very long time. Yeah, it's so true. Listen, before we let you go, one other measure that we're hearing Joe Biden may implement will impact retirement. What do we know about that? Retirement goes and what people should be invested in. Just like what I was saying, the market's mostly bullish over the whole life of the market. For a very short period, remember this was a long, long time ago, back in the downturn when the bank collapse happened in 2008 into 2009, then the market was bearish. But we quickly rallied ever since then. The market, most of the life of the market, is in an uptrend and will remain in an uptrend because there's a lot of IRA money, 401k money, long-term investments where people have the retirement savings in the market. If people are looking to invest, though, I would focus for the retirement on specific stocks like Netflix right now. It's a great example. That stock is flying. My target on Netflix is 700. That's 100 points from where almost it closed yesterday. But don't think the stock can't do it. The stock was over 700 six years ago, back in 2015, before the stock split. So I would focus on specific stocks even for retirement investments. And if you don't know what those are, and if you're not a trader or investor, and if you can't read a stock chart, then get with your financial advisor to say, listen, I don't want to put all my money in the S&P. I want to divvy it up. Maybe you put some in Apple. Maybe you put some in Amazon. Maybe you put some in Target, like I said, which was another strong stock. Stocks that are actually benefiting from the COVID. Always great to have your analysis, Melissa Armo. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.