Todd’s Take on the Market
The major averages finished down last week as the Dow fell 1.90%, the S&P 500 went down 1.30% and the NASDAQ fell 0.18%. It seems the technology companies are holding us up.
Economic numbers have not been pretty this week—jobless claims 4.4 million, this number of new unemployment claims brings the total reported since March 21 to 26 million, or about 16% of the workforce. The weekly numbers are coming down, but remain almost seven times the worst week of the Great Financial Crisis.
Existing home sales plunged the most since 2015—nobody is looking to make a move now.
Durable goods orders are in the tank.
It, however, is like I mentioned, it is not the news but the reaction to the news which has been positive.
Historically, the stock market has some of its best returns when conditions are shifting from awful to less bad.
Oil—while prices rebounded into “positive” territory, they remain at very low prices. We have basically run out of storage facilities to put the oil in. Demand has fallen off the charts (3 gallons per week) so they do not know what to do with the excess.
Yet, stocks are pushing higher in a sign that (as I have said) everybody gets a “get out of jail free” card.
Please stay tuned and I will keep you posted!
Todd Day, MBA
Portfolio Manager
Horizon Financial Services, LLC
