Friends
While Putin and Trump huddled in Hamburg, likely discussing Ringo Starr’s 77th birthday, stocks continued the seesaw action that we have seen for the past week. Once again, the Nasdaq reversed its previous day’s move leading the way to the upside (today up more than 1%). Perhaps market participants were pleased with this morning’s non-farm payroll number. 222,000 new jobs were created in June, which was better than expected. We also saw positive revisions to the previous months. Unfortunately, an increase of .2% for the average hourly wage number was somewhat disappointing, and certainly not very inflationary.
As for stocks, by the close the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 94 points to finish the day at 21,414. The S&P 500 was up 15 points to close at 2,425. Gold was down $13 to trade at $1,210 per ounce, while oil was down $1.26 to trade at $44.26 per barrel WTI.
Back to the stock market. The indecisive action as we begin the second half of the year seems to be reflecting the growing uncertainty with regards to the economy. We have a lot that could happen politically in the second half of 2017, and market participants are having difficulty handicapping the likelihood that health care and tax reform, not to mention infrastructure spending, will come to fruition. In the meantime, we will have an earnings season to chew on over the next several weeks, so we will get a read on whether stocks are priced correctly or not. We’ll let you know as it all unfolds.
Have a great weekend everyone.
