Christmas Eve Eve Market Update

There’s a lot of news coming in, impacting our portfolios in light trading, so I wanted to send out a market update today. As I was headed into the office, my daughter said to me “Why are you going to work on Christmas Eve Eve?” So I decided to name this update after her comment!

Data that came out this morning shows that both consumer spending and incomes rose 0.1% in November, which is both weak and below expectations. New home sales in November rose to a year to date total of 315,000; existing home sales rose to 4,420,000 year to date. Both are well below the respective 700,000 and 6,000,000 annual totals that economists say are needed to have a healthy housing market. However, it should be pointed out that the rate of apartment construction has doubled in the last two years, as there is a shift toward renting. We’ll have to see, over the next few years, how that impacts these economists’ expectations.

As of this morning, markets are up over 5% year to date, and up over 8% for the last 30 days.

In the global news, global markets continue to look to our economy, the world’s largest, and were up based on yesterday’s news that initial jobless claims in the U.S. fell to the lowest level since April 2008. This was, you may recall, prior to anyone realizing that we had fallen into a recession, so this is very positive.

One last note: after a lot of debate, both Congress and the Senate this morning officially passed a renewal of payroll tax cuts and unemployment benefits for two months. Lawmakers will now, next month, begin negotiations for a yearlong package, so we’ll be hearing a lot more about this very soon.

I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday; I’ll talk to you again soon!

Eric Wylie, CTFA
Registered Investment Advisor
979 693 3742
College Station, Tx

Financial Solutions, Sound Advice

%d bloggers like this: