Weekly Market Review - March 28, 2019

Chad Hassinger |
Categories
Finance

By Bradley J. Rathe, AIF®
Chief Investment Officer

March 28, 2019

"In the Spring I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours." -Mark Twain

Weekly look back:
  1. FOMC has their meeting last week and they surprised many investors with their strong stance towards leaving rates steady for 2019 and only one rate rise in 2020.  The market took it to even more of an extreme by pricing in two rate decreases by the end of 2019.
  2. Housing had been a concern in 2019 however as interest rates have started to come down, 30 year mortgage now below 4%, housing started to pick up. Existing home sales popped 11.9% last week.
  3. For the first time since the market swoon in the fall of 2018 we are starting to see some stock IPO's.  This week Lyft goes public with Uber and Pinterest expected to follow.
Weekly look ahead:
  1. Expecting a downgrade to the Final Q4 GDP reading to 2.2% from 2.6%.  Service and Consumer spending are two of the main areas for the revision.
  2. Sentiment has come off a peak recently as investors are fretting over the news of an inverted yield curve (10 Year Treasury - 3 month T-Bill).
  3. Housing Starts are expected to show some spring gains and to follow the better numbers out of Existing Home sales last week.
World Macro highlights for this week: 

Tuesday: Consumer Confidence, Housing Starts
Thursday: GDP, Corporate Profits
Friday: Personal Income and Outlays, New Home Sales, Consumer Sentiment

2018 Yearly Index Returns as of 3/22/2019

S&P 500 

12.19%

Europe Equity

9.05%

Emerging Equity

9.84%

US 10 Yr

-.25 bp

US Small Cap Stocks

12.05%

 

Graph Of The Week

Corporate profits are expected to slow this year buy in Q4 they moved up by 11.1% eclipsing the 6.1% in Q3.

 

Unless otherwise expressly indicated, the opinions or views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect, and may differ from, the opinions or views of Strategic Financial Group, LLC or others within Strategic Financial Group, LLC, including its officers, managers, owners, employees or other service providers.