Pre-market futures are down slightly, all but the small-cap Russell 2000, which is up a single point at this hour. The Dow is -85 points, the Nasdaq -40 and the S&P 500 -10 points — all roughly -0.20% to -0.25% in early trading. The S&P posted its worst single-day performance yesterday in a couple weeks. Bonds rates and oil prices have been stagnating equity moves somewhat, but really we’re still in wait-and-see mode following a favorable Jobs Week last week.
We saw a new U.S. Trade Deficit this morning for the month of July: -$65.02 billion is a nice improvement from the expected -$68.3 billion, though still lower than the revised -63.72 billion (-$65.5 billion was initially reported for June). Of course, this is still a big negative — we had kept a solvent trade deficit in the U.S. until about 1981 or so — but off the 12-month low -$78.33 billion we saw in October of last year. All-time lows were reached in early 2022, when the monthly print was below -$100 billion.
After the opening bell, we’ll see new reads on the Services sector: both S&P PMI and ISM for August. A month ago, both were north of the breakeven 50 level — 51.0 and 52.7%, respectively. As we saw in last week’s jobs reports and in other economic data of late, Services costs are remaining high, even as Goods are finally seeing healthy inventories and costs are receding. Only one of these is good for bringing down inflation, of course. Thus, this print today does carry some market interest.
At 2pm ET today, a new Beige Book from the Federal Reserve comes out — a comprehensive review of various aspects of the domestic economy, again with an eye toward where inflation remains relative to other areas. This will be another minor proxy for understanding where the Fed is thinking of taking interest rates — either keeping them at a 22-year high 5.25-5.50% or cranking them up further. We already know September is a challenging month for the stock market historically; a surprise rate hike may seal this particular month’s fate.
That said, Zacks Vice President Kevin Matras has some interesting comments today in his Profit from the Pros column: while September does indeed rank as the lowest-performing month, at least over the past 77 years, if year-to-date markets are up more than +15% by the time September rolls around, then the month is typically a winner for investments. Year to date, the S&P is +17% and the Nasdaq is +41%. To read the full article, click here.
Questions or comments about this article and/or author? Click here>>
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Pre-Markets Still Tepidly Wait-and-See
Pre-market futures are down slightly, all but the small-cap Russell 2000, which is up a single point at this hour. The Dow is -85 points, the Nasdaq -40 and the S&P 500 -10 points — all roughly -0.20% to -0.25% in early trading. The S&P posted its worst single-day performance yesterday in a couple weeks. Bonds rates and oil prices have been stagnating equity moves somewhat, but really we’re still in wait-and-see mode following a favorable Jobs Week last week.
We saw a new U.S. Trade Deficit this morning for the month of July: -$65.02 billion is a nice improvement from the expected -$68.3 billion, though still lower than the revised -63.72 billion (-$65.5 billion was initially reported for June). Of course, this is still a big negative — we had kept a solvent trade deficit in the U.S. until about 1981 or so — but off the 12-month low -$78.33 billion we saw in October of last year. All-time lows were reached in early 2022, when the monthly print was below -$100 billion.
After the opening bell, we’ll see new reads on the Services sector: both S&P PMI and ISM for August. A month ago, both were north of the breakeven 50 level — 51.0 and 52.7%, respectively. As we saw in last week’s jobs reports and in other economic data of late, Services costs are remaining high, even as Goods are finally seeing healthy inventories and costs are receding. Only one of these is good for bringing down inflation, of course. Thus, this print today does carry some market interest.
At 2pm ET today, a new Beige Book from the Federal Reserve comes out — a comprehensive review of various aspects of the domestic economy, again with an eye toward where inflation remains relative to other areas. This will be another minor proxy for understanding where the Fed is thinking of taking interest rates — either keeping them at a 22-year high 5.25-5.50% or cranking them up further. We already know September is a challenging month for the stock market historically; a surprise rate hike may seal this particular month’s fate.
That said, Zacks Vice President Kevin Matras has some interesting comments today in his Profit from the Pros column: while September does indeed rank as the lowest-performing month, at least over the past 77 years, if year-to-date markets are up more than +15% by the time September rolls around, then the month is typically a winner for investments. Year to date, the S&P is +17% and the Nasdaq is +41%. To read the full article, click here.
Questions or comments about this article and/or author? Click here>>