Markets continue to be volatile. Our Peek of the Week talks about stocks heading north last week as investors hoped for the market to finally hit its bottom. Corporate earnings suggest we haven't reached the bottom yet and it's now corporate earnings season. This is the time we learn how companies performed during the previous quarter and it seems that earnings are continuing to grow, but at a slower pace than in the past. Our "PEEK" shares some important numbers for investors who need their savings and investments to deliver income.
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After quite the "bah humbug" week in the markets, our new Peek of the Week shares the latest economic data to try and explain what's going on. The fight against inflation has had mixed results and especially when compared to how things have unfolded in the past. Mixed signals from the past has caused mixed messages for the present, and mixed feelings about the future...
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Many investors who sold shares during the first half of the year are buying again. The current debate for investors and investment professional happens to be, "is the stock market in a bear market rally or a new bull market?" Today's Peek of the Week discusses whether or not it's possible to truly distinguish bull markets from bear markets. As the stock market rally paused, fuel was added to this debate.
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Today's Peek of the Week attempts to answer this question. With everything going on, investors have embraced the idea that the Federal Reserve can be persuaded to slow the pace of rates hikes. Investors saw stocks move higher last week, but the bond market was less optimistic after more Consumer Price Index (CPI) data was released. So what's the chance of a recession happening? According to Vince Golle and Kyungjin Yoo of Bloomberg, the chance of a recession within the next year is just below 50-50.
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Today's Peek of the Week has the latest insight into how the stock markets are cooling down now that the U.S. economy isn't burning as hot as it once was. With that being said, and even after the last two quarters of slowed growth, the United States economy continues to surprise us. Unemployment has fallen quite low, the labor market is on fire, and the main driver for this shift has been women returning to the workplace. With all this "job talk" brings more "recession talk" and today's PEEK of the WEEK shares some second quarter business activity data to follow up on the whole recession idea.
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The stock market has been dropping, but it's important to know the stock market isn't very accurate when it comes to predicting recessions. And it sure seems like that's the word being thrown around these days: recession. The fact is, bear markets in stocks lead to recessions only about 53 percent of the time. In other words, the stock market has about the same predictive value for recessions as a simple coin toss. Let that sink in!
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Today's Peek of the Week explains how tensions seem to rise when investors encounter bear market territory, causing some to wearily stay the course, and others to tap out. How is a bear market defined? It can be when shares prices decline 20 percent or more, or it can also occur when investors are feeling more bearish than bullish. It's safe to say we are in bear territory... read our "Peek" for more details and learn about how the investing decisions that can be made today will ultimately affect your long-term outcomes. You don't want to miss this!
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Today's Peek of the Week explains the complexity of inflation and how the numbers may vary, depending on how things get measured. To determine how quickly prices will rise or fall is not easy and our government relies on two indexes to get their answers: the CPI (Consumer Price Index) and the PCE (the Personal Consumption Index). These signify headline inflation and core inflation. Read our "Peek of the Week" to learn how to differentiate between them and learn why the cost of two things we use daily, food and energy, can be excluded from inflation calculations. One thing we know for sure: policymakers have A LOT of data to consider before they make their predictions for the future.
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