Great Graphic: Jobless Claims and S&P 500

This Great Graphic, composed on Bloomberg, is fascinating. It tracks the 4-week moving average of weekly initial jobless claims and inverts the line.  The decline in weekly jobless claims is now shown as a rising line depicting the improvement in this measure of the labor market.  The yellow line is the S&P 500.  

The two have been tracking each, not perfectly, but closely.   Even with a four-week average of weekly initial jobless claims, the time series can be noisy.  Similarly, this chart does nothing to smooth out the movement in the S&P 500.  

This of course says nothing about cause and effect or even the lesser claim of correlation. Nevertheless, we find it provocative.   Maybe they are even correlated to a third factor--the gradual improvement in the economy from the deepest contraction since the Great Depression.   Moreover, it is difficult to see in the chart the two earlier QE programs or the current one.