Sunday, August 24, 2014

Week Ahead Magazine: August 24, 2014

This past week saw the S&P 500 Index set a record closing price of 1,992.37 on Thursday. One article in this week's magazine notes the equity market has gone over 1,020 days without a 10% correction. Investors seem content on buying market "dips". This most recent dip saw the market decline 3.94% from its July 24th closing price down to 1,909.57 on August 7th. The "V-shaped" recovery from August 7th has seen the market advance 4.3% to Friday's close.

From The Blog of HORAN Capital Advisors

The only major U.S. index that remains negative for the year is the small cap Russell 2000 Index which is down .3%. The leader is the Nasdaq composite index which is up 8.7% followed by the S&P 500 Index, up 7.6%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average remains the laggard and is up 2.6% on the year.

Much of the focus this past week was on Janet Yellen's Jackson Hole presentation. The comments had little market impact with treasury yields rising just slightly across most of the interest rate curve. Most of the economic news last week was fairly positive. As we noted in our earlier post today, manufacturing, leading indicator data and jobs data seem to be supportive of a positive economic climate looking out to year end. From an international perspective, economic data remains mixed and saw weakening in most area's Purchasing Managers Indices.

A number of economic data releases are scheduled to be reported this week. Some of the potential market moving reports are:
  • New home sales (M)
  • Durable Goods Orders (T)
  • GDP and jobless claims (Th)
  • Personal Income and Outlays (F)
The magazine as well as blog posting has been lighter this week as we were visiting out of town clients during the first half of the week. Below is the link to this week's magazine.


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