Latest Posts

Last week at this time the S&P was sitting close to the lows of the session and the market was down over 6% for the week. Fear over the election was escalating, and concern for rising virus cases had many market participants scaling back on risk assets. The market was having trouble digesting it all.

At current writing the S&P 500 is down over 1.75% on the day, bringing the week to date downturn to over 6.3%. Barring a late day, substantial rebound this will mark the worst week since March and the 4^th worst week of what has been a turbulent year. For the month, the S&P 500 is down over 3.5%, bring it close to down 10% from the highs set in early September. From a technical standpoint, the market action looks pretty poor.

After Monday’s nearly 1.5% selloff following a weekend with no progress on a potential stimulus bill, the market traded in a narrow range, offering little in the way of future directional indication. The market seems somewhat trapped at the current levels, unwilling to make any concerted effort to move in any one direction for fear that the next headline would kill the narrative.

The market rebounded sharply this week to finish with impressive gains across all major indices. The best performing of the US stock indices was the Russell 2000. The small cap index’s gain of 6.42% for the week help narrow some of the large performance disparity between it and the Nasdaq 100, which has been expanding over the last 12 months.

It’s been said that in times of difficulty we should take it easy on ourselves. This week I did just that. I didn’t go over the top, like, say, indulging in a hot fudge sundae. But nevertheless it felt good to look after myself, and my mental well-being. What did I do? I didn’t watch the debate. I don’t think I missed anything.

For the week, the S&P 500 was down a little over 1%, which brings the month-to-date downturn to a touch over 6.5%. The stock market, which has been led higher over the last six months by technology stocks, has been dragged down by the higher flying tech names. Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Google parent Alphabet are all down an average of 13.7% this month.

It was a mixed week for markets this week. The large cap S&P 500 was down slightly, while the small cap Russell 2000 index enjoyed a nice bounce. This marks a fairly dramatic turn of events as large cap tech companies have by and large been carrying the market over the last 6 months, while small caps have lagged. Below is a graph showing the performance of the Nasdaq 100 Index measured against the Russell 2000.

After a sharp sell-off Tuesday, following the three day Labor Day weekend, the stock market fell into a consolidation period the remainder of the week. The consolidation period witnessed fairly dramatic intraday swings, with little overall progress made one way for the other from Wednesday through the end of the week. For now the market still seems to be at the mercy of a few heavily followed momentum stocks.

A dramatic shift in the market occurred this week. The tremors started Wednesday, when Tech stalwarts Tesla and Apple saw their stocks decline while the market indices continued to march higher. The subtle tremor may have gone unnoticed by the many, who could have simply perceived the drop as a rally pause after both stocks witnessed meteoric rises on the backs of what was nothing more than a stock split announcement.

This week’s financial news of note was that the Federal Reserve announced a dramatic shift in its economic policy making. Rather than targeting a specific inflation rate (2%), the Fed is now adopting a policy called AIT (Average Inflationary Target).