Provides a market roundup, a selection of useful data points we use for our investment analysis, and some interesting articles/charts we have noticed recently.
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Stocks recorded a second consecutive week of gains as investors weighed key inflation data and quarterly earnings reporting season kicked off in earnest on Friday. The Nasdaq Composite and growth-oriented sectors outperformed, helped by rebounds in some mega-cap technology-related names, including Amazon.com, Tesla, and Microsoft.
Goldman Sachs expects the US will narrowly avoid a recession this year, and that slower growth will cool both wage and price inflation. That said, it expects the S&P 500 to end the year at 4000, little changed from now.
Investors last week seemed to spend much of the week waiting for and then reacting to the Labor Department’s report on consumer price index (CPI) inflation on Thursday morning. Headline prices fell 0.1% in December, a tick lower than expected and the first decline since May 2020. The drop brought the year-over-year gain to 6.5%, its lowest level since October 2021. The 12-month increase in core (less food and energy) consumer inflation fell as expected to 5.7%, also the slowest pace in over a year. Ongoing increases in the Department’s calculation of shelter costs, which lag actual declines in home prices and rents, were largely behind remaining inflation pressures.
ABS data released on Wednesday showed that Australia’s monthly inflation index came in a touch higher than expected. Headline inflation landed at 7.3 per cent, while trimmed mean inflation was 5.6 per cent, compared with expectations of 5.5 per cent.
With a raft of new economic data and earnings for companies due imminently, the next few weeks will be important to either validate or crucify a narrative of new hope that is currently sweeping the markets.
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