The Markets Who’s the culprit? Speculating on who or what is to blame for recent market weakness is a popular pastime right now. Last week, Barron’s said the search for someone to blame is a lot like a game of Clue. So far, the most common conclusions are “the People's Bank of China with a […]
U.S. stock markets finished last week higher than they started it, but the five-day ride was awfully bumpy. Concerns about China’s slowing growth, shifting currency valuations, and falling stock markets, coupled with uncertainty about the Federal Reserve’s next monetary policy move, contributed to malaise in world markets early last week. After falling by about 6 […]
Correction! The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 6 percent last week. That puts the benchmark index about 10 percent below its record high on May 19, 2015, according to Barron’s. A drop of that magnitude from a new high may be a correction – a brief but jarring drop in value that often causes […]
Stock markets in the United States got off to a good start last week, heading higher before stumbling over China’s currency news. China, which has one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economies, is experiencing a slowdown in economic growth. The Economist reported data released last week showed, “…an 8 percent fall in Chinese […]
Back to school…back to higher interest rates? After a solid July jobs report arrived on Friday – 215,000 new jobs were created and unemployment remained at 5.3 percent – analysts were pretty confident there would be ample support for a Federal Reserve rate increase (a.k.a. liftoff) in September. Bloomberg reported the odds of a September […]
The market is flat. That’s right. It’s a rare occurrence – something that has happened just 12 times since 1926, according to Fortune – but the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (S&P 500) has remained in a narrow trading range for seven months. For every sector that has delivered performance gains (for instance, healthcare, software, […]
There was a spate of bad news last week, and it drove U.S. markets lower. China’s wild ride isn’t over yet. The Purchasing Managers’ Index, a private measure of Chinese manufacturing, came in below expectations at 48.2, according to BloombergBusiness. Results below 50 indicate the sector is contracting. That doesn’t bode well for growth in […]
It’s a cautionary tale… Many Chinese investors were so optimistic about the prospects for Chinese stock markets they bought on margin, meaning they borrowed money to buy stocks. Borrowing to invest has been so popular that the amount of margin loans doubled in just six months to about $320 billion, according to Barron’s. Experts cited […]
It’s been a wild, wild quarter. In early April, stock markets were doing so well (14 of 47 national benchmark indices hit all-time highs) that global market capitalization — the value of stocks trading on exchanges throughout the world — pushed past $70 trillion, according to Bloomberg Business. The publication attributed the climb to stimulus […]