Hope you are all doing well. It was another good week for stocks. The S&P 500, the Dow, and the NASDAQ each rose more than 1%. Stocks climbed for the fifth week in a row to extend the market’s recovery from a sharply negative start to September. The S&P 500 and Dow pushed their record levels higher while the NASDAQ ended less than 2% below its historic peak. The puck dropped this week on a new hockey season. I have broken down this week’s update using Hockey terminology.
Going Top Shelf
Earnings season got into full swing on Friday with two major U.S. banks and one of the largest money managers scored big gains after beating estimates. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) finished Friday’s session up 4.4% after reporting higher-than-expected third-quarter profit and raising its annual interest income forecast. Shares in Wells Fargo (WFC) rallied 5.6% after its profit also beat analysts’ expectations. BlackRock (BLK) stock gained 3.6% after the asset manager reported that its assets under management had hit a record high for the third straight quarter. Many of you have money with BlackRock as they manage the 5 core funds that Federal government employees have in their Thrift Savings Plan.
High Sticking
It seems from minutes released on Wednesday from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s September meeting that they were short one member when it came to September’s half a point cut. The minutes showed that there was robust debate among policymakers over the half-percentage point rate cut that was ultimately approved. Some officials argued for a smaller quarter-point reduction. Although when it came to a final vote, 11 of the12 voting Fed members ended up in favor of the half-point cut.
“If you screw up and do something, don’t lie about it; come clean.” – Pete Rose
We got more revisions of the jobs numbers and a great jobs number for September. Unlike the previous revisions which were major negative corrections these revisions were smaller and positive. The U.S. economy generated 254,000 new jobs in September, that is the strongest result in six months. The jobs numbers for July and August were revised upward by a total of 72,000. The unemployment rate slipped to 4.1% from 4.2% the previous month. After two months of weak labor reports and downward revisions, markets welcomed this new positive data.
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