Category: Economic Data

Markets Don’t Fall In Straight Lines!

As I suggested in recent posts, the markets are in a volatile frame of mind, and this won’t change quickly, as the fundamentals are shifting under us. I still hold the view that the stock market is vulnerable to a big selloff once liquidity is withdrawn and interest rates rise. Yet, despite some obvious wobbles, central banks have ensured money has stayed plentiful for the last decade, they cut interest rates rates have fallen, and as a result, anyone who did much to protect themselves against the risk of a decline would have done badly by it.

And on the other side, the bulls still argue that the environment remains set fair for stocks, and that even a fall in bonds would ram home the fact that there is no alternative to equities. And of course they’ve been right for the best part of a decade. And they will be, until they are not.

If you had looked at the US markets an hour or two before close, you would say the markets were continuing their linear falls. Yet, these kinds of sudden widespread losses day after day, week after week, are screaming for a bounce. And we got one.

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Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.

If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.

Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.

Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.

Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.

Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.

Fear Grips The Market – So Where To Hide?

It’s been another doozy of a week on Wall Street. US stocks fell, capping the worst week since the outbreak of the pandemic roiled markets, with tech shares bearing the brunt of the sell-off amid shaky company earnings and prospects for higher US interest rates.

“This is the longest short week, I think, in history, right?” Jay Pelosky, founder and president of TPW Investment Management, said. “It’s only been a four-day week and it feels like it’s been two weeks rolled into one.”All the U.S. stock indexes closed lower Friday, capping another punishing week for growth and technology stocks as investors await a Federal Reserve update next week on how aggressively interest rates may rise and financial conditions tighten to tame inflation.

The NASDAQ Composite Index led the three stock benchmarks lower Friday, ending down 2.7%, but off 7.6% for the week, which was its worst weekly decline since March 2020, The NASDAQ also entered correction territory mid-week, commonly measured as at least a 10% decline from its recent record close, and recorded its worst start to a year through Friday since the 2008 global financial crisis. It ended at 13,769.

Rising 10-year Treasury yields, have also pressured speculative stocks and total returns of riskier assets. It rose 1.35% to 1.770, while the 2 year was up 2.3% to 1.0158.

The S&P 500 index tumbled 1.89% Friday and 5.7% for the week, and closed below its 200-day moving average, a key technical level, for the first time since 2020. It ended at 4397. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.3% for the session and 4.6% for the week, pulled lower in part by jitters about pinched margins as major banks kicked off fourth-quarter earnings. It ended at 34,265.

The latest edition of our finance and property news digest with a distinctively Australian flavour.

Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/

Is 2022 The Year When Stuff Starts To Break? – With Tarric Brooker

I am joined by Journalist Tarric Brooker for our afternoon chat in a week where so much looks close to breaking point. And once again he bring some chart gems to underscore what is going on. Tarric is on Twitter as @AvidCommentator.

The latest edition of our finance and property news digest with a distinctively Australian flavour.

Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/

Decoding Market Uncertainty

Wall Street’s main indexes fell on Thursday and a rally in U.S. stocks faded late in the session as investors debated whether equities were becoming bargains after a sell-off to start the year that has seen the NASDAQ fall into correction territory.

Major U.S. indexes had been up sharply for much of the day after a steep drop to start the week. The NASDAQ on Wednesday closed 10.7% below its November all-time high, confirming it was in a correction.

In a note posted Thursday, Grantham, the co-founder of Boston asset manager GMO, describes U.S. stocks as being in a “super bubble,” only the fourth of the past century. And just as they did in the crash of 1929, the dot-com bust of 2000 and the financial crisis of 2008, he’s certain this bubble will burst, sending indexes back to statistical norms and possibly further.

Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/

Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.

If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.

Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.

Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.

Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.

Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.

Tech In Correction Territory!

Strong U.S. and European corporate results could not stop a slide on Wall Street, where the NASDAQ entered a correction, as rising crude prices kept inflation concerns alive even as bond yields eased a bit after earlier touching fresh multiyear highs.

The NASDAQ closed more than 10% lower from its Nov. 19 record closing high to confirm a correction as investors continue to price in the Federal Reserve moving faster to hike interest rates, fears that led to Tuesday’s sell-off.

The latest edition of our finance and property news digest with a distinctively Australian flavour.

Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/

Oil – The Last Hold Out?

Once gain the markets were weaker in the US on Tuesday. As well as inflation fears and interest rate hike concerns, falls were triggered by an 8% slide in Goldman Sachs shares after Wall Street’s premier investment bank missed quarterly profit expectations, hampered by weaker trading revenues and rising expenses.

That share decline put Goldman on course for its worst single-day showing since June 2020, shedding about $10 billion off its market valuation since Friday’s close, although it recovered to trade down 6.5% towards the close.
This earnings miss triggered further selling in Wall Street banks. Morgan Stanley, which reports quarterly results on Wednesday, was down more nearly 5%, while JP Morgan added to losses from a week earlier, down more than 4%.

We are seeing a repeating story, with bank stocks reporting lower than expected earnings. Bank earnings in the fourth quarter have taken a hit from lower trading volumes as the Federal Reserve slowed the pace of its asset purchases after 18 months of pumping liquidity into capital markets to ease the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Fed’s intervention had fuelled trading activity as clients bought and sold more stocks and bonds, repositioning their portfolios to match the changing economic environment. But fourth-quarter earnings from large U.S. banks have showed the market backdrop returning to more normal levels.

Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/

Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.

If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.

Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.

Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.

Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.

Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.

Will The Building Approval Improvements Be Short Lived?

The total number of dwellings approved rose 3.6 per cent in seasonally adjusted terms in November, following a 13.6 per cent fall in October.

This uptick in construction may not continue, stating that while working from home may support approvals in the short-term, and that omicron could induce higher savings rates, there are bigger risks to building approvals – specifically higher interest rates.

We also know that because HomeBuilder brought forward a lot of housing projects; there are a lot of people who maybe usually would have started to build a home this year or next year that did it last year instead when they could have got HomeBuilder. So all of those factors together do create a risk of building approvals falling further in the longer term.

Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/

Today’s post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.

If you are buying your home in Sydney’s contentious market, you do not need to stand alone. This is the time you need to have Edwin from Ribbon Property Consultants standing along side you.

Buying property, is both challenging and adversarial. The vendor has a professional on their side.

Emotions run high – price discovery and price transparency are hard to find – then there is the wasted time and financial investment you make.

Edwin understands your needs. So why not engage a licensed professional to stand alongside you. With RPC you know you have: experience, knowledge, and master negotiators, looking after your best interest.

Shoot Ribbon an email on info@ribbonproperty.com.au & use promo code: DFA-WTW/MARTIN to receive your 10% DISCOUNT OFFER.