Help Coming From The Government? One of the most discussed topics in economics and investing is how much the elimination of the $600 in weekly unemployment benefits impacted the economy. Recently, Redbook same store sales growth actually improved in the latest reading. It’s now positive. On the othe
Nothing Can Stop This Market S P 500 has only been down twice this month. Nothing can stop this bull market besides the Fed which won’t be raising rates anytime soon. A full return to normalcy because of a better COVID-19 treatment or its spread dying off may cause tech stocks to crash. Since tech i
6 Year Low In Consumer Confidence It’s clear the decline in jobless benefits caused consumer confidence to fall because COVID-19 cases have been sharply declining this month. Plus, the stock market has been up. It's clear the coming election didn't alter confidence. It may have caused slightly more
Stocks Always Go Up This is a great market because no matter what the leadership is on the day, the index almost always ends higher. Last week the momentum tech stocks led the market higher. On Monday, cyclicals did the heavy lifting. S P 500 rose 1%. It’s still in the range where if it tops
Small Businesses Are Coming Back We hear a lot about how badly small businesses are doing. Tthat’s because the businesses that are near shutting down or have been forced to shut down get most of the news coverage. For example, it’s not news if a business is doing 10% worse than before the recession,
Different Market The stock market was different on Friday. As per usual, the Nasdaq outperformed the Russell 2000 as the tech index was up 0.42% and the small cap index fell 0.76%. However, the rally was mostly in Tesla and Apple. The market’s breadth narrowed considerably. For example, the cloud in
No Rate Hikes For A Long Time In an analysis of the Fed’s decision to delay setting targets and not control the yield curve, it's notable that the Fed doesn’t need to convince people rates will be lower for longer. Fed has now convinced everyone that rates won’t be raised for the next few years.
Most Stocks Selloff In a normal market, you would say Thursday was an extremely unusual day. However, this is the most bizarre market most have ever seen, so it’s consistent with the new normal. Logically, it makes sense stocks fell when the housing market was imploding and the banking system was sh
Very Weak Jobless Claims The economy is in a race against time. Good news is the number of COVID-19 cases is falling rapidly and the labor market is improving. Bad news is federal unemployment benefits have gone away in most states. 11 states have started paying people $300 per week and 3 states are
Stocks Fall On Fed Minutes We’ve all watched stocks react to Fed announcements for years. In the last few months especially, we’ve seen the market fall initially after an announcement and then rally to a new high on the day. Most didn’t bet on it, but some were very confident the market would hit a
