M Notes: Mon, 10-20

LAST WEEK:

Markets:  They moved up last week, reversing the prior week’s loss. 

S&P roller coaster last week:  Up significantly, Down, Up, Down, and Up.

Fed Balance Sheet:  $6.597 Trillion. 

Fed Beige Book:   Three Districts showed slight to modest growth, five Districts with no change, and four Districts with slightly softening economic activity.  The Cleveland District was one of the five Districts with no change.  

Housing Starts, Industrial Production, Inflation, Jobless claims,  Retail Sales, and the Trade Deficit:  No numbers were reported yet, due to the Government Shutdown.

National Debt:  $37.889 Trillion.  

Shutdown:  Senator Schumer (D-NY) is requiring, for a seven week extension, $1.5 Trillion in new spending ($1.5 Trillion… is a lot of money).  But how much of that is actually for Healthcare?  How much of that spending has nothing to do with Healthcare?   The House voted in September for a clean CR (pretty much on party lines), to keep government running and allow time for negotiations.  The hold up is in the Senate.  The Government has been shut down for almost three weeks now, with no end in sight.  

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THIS WEEK:

Focus of the week:  The Shutdown.   Will any progress be made this week?

Calendar:   Existing Home Sales, Jobless Claims (Thu); the CPI, and New Home Sales (Fri).

Earnings:  A new Earning Season is underway.  Some of the companies reporting this week:    AT&T, Capital One, Coca-Cola, GE Aerospace, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Lockheed Martin, Netflix, Philip Morris, Proctor & Gamble, Tesla, Texas Instruments, TMobile, and Union Pacific.  

* The Standard & Poor's 500 (S&P 500) is an unmanaged group of securities considered to be representative of the stock market in general.    The Dow Jones Industrial Average is a price-weighted index of 30 actively traded blue-chip stocks.  The NASDAQ Composite Index is an unmanaged, market-weighted index of all over-the-counter common stocks traded on the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation System.  Yahoo! Finance, the Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily and Barron’s are several of the sources used for financial information. 

* The National Debt figure comes from usdebtclock.org.   

* Opinions expressed are subject to change without notice and are not intended as investment advice or to predict future performance.  Consult your financial professional before making any investment decision.  You cannot invest directly in an index.   Past performance does not guarantee future results. No strategy can assure a profit or protect against a loss.  Investments in the securities markets involve risk, such as loss of your principal.