Friends
Well that was disappointing. Today’s first look (yes, there are a couple of revisions to come) at 1st quarter GDP was a bit of a downer. Most economists were expecting that the economy had grown at 3% or more in the quarter, making up for the disastrous 4th quarter of 2012. This was supposed to be the quarter of rebuilding inventories and recovery from the “fiscal cliff” inertia of late last year. Unfortunately, the first quarter grew at only 2.5%. Now that wouldn’t be so bad, but other recent economic reports are pointing to growth slowing as we navigate the second quarter of the year. Most economists expect the GDP number to weaken as the year unfolds.
Bond yields continue to fall as the Fed’s easy money policies don’t seem to be taking hold. As for stocks, today’s action was mixed, but by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 11 points to finish the day at 14,712. The S&P 500 was down 2 points to close at 1582. Gold was down $6 to trade at $1455 per ounce, while oil was down $.71 to trade at $92.93 per barrel WTI.
Next week we get a lot more earnings releases and on Friday the all-important jobs report. As expected, earnings season has been choppy with some companies simply performing better than others. How their share prices reacted was often dictated by how they had been priced going into the earnings print. This week we saw what could be the beginning of a rotation within the stock market itself, but it’s probably too early to make a definitive call on that. Let’s see what next week holds.
Have a great weekend everyone.
