Take a look at last week’s market recap from Joe Gallemore, CIMA® Partner & Director of Investment Management for Argent Bridge Advisors. Watch the video now!
Joe’s Notes:
- The past two weeks was a Tale of Two Markets. The week ending August 20th saw considerable volatility sparked by the instability in Afghanistan and continued worry over rising inflation in the US.
- Then last week, just about all major stock indexes rallied nicely to recover most or all of the losses from the prior week. The asset classes which are historically more volatile enjoyed the highest returns: Small caps, Emerging Markets, and the tech-heavy NASDAQ index.
- Friday saw the S&P 500 hit a new all-time high. This came on the heels of a speech by the Federal Reserve at the conclusion of their annual retreat in Jackson Hole, WY. The Fed outlined their intention to begin steps of slowly unwinding some of the market-friendly policies that have been in place since last March. In the speech, they were careful to say that they are very focused on not raising interest rates too soon, which was a comment much liked by market investors.
- Looking ahead in the short-term, a lot of attention will now likely turn to economic data to gauge if economic growth is slowing at all and by how much. After two hot quarters, market and economic momentum is widely expected to decelerate in the 2nd half of the year. And with interest rates put to rest, for the time being, institutional investors will be scouring data reports for signals of slowing growth.
