The Bottom Line
● U.S. Equities took flight after a stronger than expected jobs report on Friday. The S&P 500 has closed at new highs for seven days in row.
● Yields plummeted for the week with both the 10-year yield and the 2-year yield falling -10bps.
● The Fed announced a start to the tapering of their asset purchases on Wednesday and labor markets started to show some early signs of improving. The rest of economic news was mixed for the week, with some manufacturing data disappointing, while others surprised to the upside. Mortgage applications tumbled for the week and the U.S. Trade Balance came in larger than expected.
Labor Markets Show Signs of Improving…Finally!
After disappointing for two months in a row, the labor markets finally showed some initial signs of improvement by coming in better than expected on Friday. This was enough to push markets higher and the S&P 500 closed at record highs on Friday and for the previous six days in a row, the S&P 500 was up +2.00% for the week. Nasdaq faired even better than the S&P 500, up +3.05% for the week. The Russell 2000 took home the gold for the week, up a whopping +6.09% for the week. International equities had a solid week as well, the STOXX Europe 600 was up +1.67% for the week and the Nikkei-225 was up +2.49% for the week. The Fed announced a timeline for the tapering of asset purchases in the middle of the week and while the tightening of monetary policy normally acts as a headwind to markets, traders shrugged this off. The strong jobs report for the previous month on Friday suggests that the Fed was correct in starting their tapering process in mid-November, but one strong jobs report may not be enough to reach the Fed’s target of full employment. Market participants will continue to keep a close watch on future data releases.
Digits & Did You Knows
BILLIONS – As of the close of stock trading on Monday
10/25/21, Elon Musk was worth 255.2 billion, the first American ever to exceed $250 billion in net worth. (source: Forbes, BTN Research).
NEW HOMES – the median sales price of a new home sold in the USA in September 2021 was $408,800, a record high both on a nominal basis and on an inflation-adjusted basis. (source: Census Bureau, BTN Research).
JUST IN CASE – Wyoming has a “rainy day” fund of $1.1 billion, enough to cover the state’s operating expenses for 301 days, longer than any other US State. (source: Pew Charitable Trust, BTN Research).
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Source: Bloomberg. Asset‐class performance is presented by using market returns from an exchange‐traded fund (ETF) proxy that best represents its respective broad asset class. Returns shown are net of fund fees for and do not necessarily represent performance of specific mutual funds and/or exchange‐traded funds recommended by the Prime Capital Investment Advisors. The performance of those funds may be substantially different than the performance of the broad asset classes and to proxy ETFs represented here. U.S. Bonds (iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF); High‐YieldBond(iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF); Intl Bonds (SPDR® Bloomberg Barclays International Corporate Bond ETF); Large Growth (iShares Russell 1000 Growth ETF); Large Value (iShares Russell 1000 ValueETF);MidGrowth(iSharesRussell Mid‐CapGrowthETF);MidValue (iSharesRussell Mid‐Cap Value ETF); Small Growth (iShares Russell 2000 Growth ETF); Small Value (iShares Russell 2000 Value ETF); Intl Equity (iShares MSCI EAFE ETF); Emg Markets (iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF); and Real Estate (iShares U.S. Real Estate ETF). The return displayed as “Allocation” is a weighted average of the ETF proxies shown as represented by: 30% U.S. Bonds, 5% International Bonds, 5% High Yield Bonds, 10% Large Growth, 10% Large Value, 4% Mid Growth, 4%Mid Value, 2% Small Growth, 2% Small Value, 18% International Stock, 7% Emerging Markets, 3% Real Estate.
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