Market Commentary: More New Highs and a Jobs Surprise
What a first half it was, as the S&P 500 was down close to 20% at the April lows and incredibly have come back to new highs already, one of the fastest recoveries ever.
What a first half it was, as the S&P 500 was down close to 20% at the April lows and incredibly have come back to new highs already, one of the fastest recoveries ever.
The increased number of COVID-19 cases appears to be pressuring employment in the U.S. Last week, the number of initial unemployment claims rose from 1.3 million to 1.4 million. (See Figure 1.) After slowly declining for weeks, the uptick shows signs of a weakening job market.
Evidence for a sharp, although possibly brief, economic recovery continues to mount. As shown in Figure 1, retail sales rebounded another 7.5% in June and are now 1.1% higher than a year ago. Signs of economic reopening showed up throughout the data released last week.
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Stocks continued to climb in the face of an increasing number of new COVID-19 cases and evidence the surge is stifling the economy’s ability to recover. Initial unemployment claims dipped to 1.3 million, but they have remained above 1 million for 16 consecutive weeks.
I’ve done some google searches on this quote, and even though there are a number of variations of it, no one really knows who said it first. Some credit it to Sir Austen Chamberlain in 1936, but even he said it was told to him by a Chinese diplomat.
The S&P 500 wrapped up its best quarter since 1998, gaining 20.5%, amid a strong employment report and continued concerns as the United States and the world posted a record number of coronavirus cases.