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Weekly Review
2022 Q4 is off to strong start! There was a decent rally on Monday and Tuesday as the market assumed the Fed would slow their rate hike approach soon. A pullback in Treasury yields from last Friday’s close helped push upside higher in the beginning of the week.
The 10-year T notes was at 3.79% last Friday and fell to 3.62% by Tuesday’s close. The two-year note fell 0.12%. At the same time the S&P, Dow, and Nasdaq all had gains of over 5.5%.
The assumption that the Fed would slow was helped by the lower-than-expected ISM Manufacturing and Construction spending and the lower than expected 25 basis point rate increase by the Reserve Bank of Australia.
All did not remain sunny unfortunately, the week ended with a sell off. Treasury yields moved up and the September Employment Report was a reality check for the idea that the Fed would be less aggressive sometime soon.
The employment report showed continued strength in the job market, extra fuel for an aggressive Fed. There were also some hawkish Fed talks this week; Atlanta Fed President Bostic said that the inflation fight is still in its early days and the Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari said that he is not comfortable pausing until there is evidence that inflation is cooling.
Global politics also caused some worries that were in play for the week. OPEC+ announced a production cut of 2 million barrels per day starting next month. This sent oil prices surging with WTI crude futures rising 17.3%. The surge in oil prices kept the energy sector’s gains intact this week. It outpaced the other sectors in the S&P by a margin of 13.9%. On the other hand, the real estate sector suffered the most with a 4.2% loss.
The 10-year yield ended the week at 3.88%, the two year rose to 4.3%. Despite heavily losses on Friday, the market was able to hold onto some gains. The S&P was us 1.5%, Dow 2.0%, and Nasdaq 0.7%.
The data release schedule has some events to keep eyes on. Pay attention to the FOMC minutes on Wednesday, the CPI reading on Thursday, and the retail data on Friday.
As I said last week, inflation has not waivered much, the job market is still healthy, and the average consumer is still doing fairly well. The data continues to show this; however, the data is delayed by a few weeks or a month depending on the report. Because of this delay and because the effects of a hike take time to materialize in those areas, it’s becoming more likely that the Fed stays aggressive with their rate hikes and may push the economy off the cliff before they’ve had time to realize that we’ve missed the window to ease. Be ready for much more losses in the long term, in the short term we could see another somewhat flat week next week, or red if the market continues to be discouraged by the data that supports an aggressive Fed.
Though this week wasn’t too down, I took advantage of the discounts with some buys in Activision ($ATVI), Intel ($INTC), and a few others you can read about in the portfolio update here. Use that update to help you put together a shopping list of some solid dividend stocks to pick up for the long term.
And if you like updates like this, follow my Twitter or my CommonStock page where I post updates on the economic data throughout the week.
Regards,
Dividend Dollars