M Notes: Mon, 12-15

LAST WEEK:

Markets:  Mixed Market results last week.  

S&P roller coaster last week:  Down, Down a touch, Up a lot, Up, and Down a bunch.  

Fed Balance Sheet:  $6.539 Trillion. 

Fed Meeting:   The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee (FOMC), in a divided vote, lower their interest rate ¼ point, down to 3.25%-3.50%.  

Jobless Claims:  The weekly number came in at 236,000.  The four-week average came in at 217,000.

National Debt:  $38.122 Trillion.  

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THIS WEEK:

Focus of the week:  Lots of catch-up Data (from the Shut-Down) this week.  One focus:  Jobs & Unemployment.  The November number come out on Tuesday this week.  Expectations are for the Jobs number to drop from 119,000 (September… October was skipped) to 40,000.  The Unemployment number is expected to rise a tick from 4.4% up to 4.5%.  

Calendar:   The new Jobs & Unemployment numbers, Housing Starts, Industrial Production (Tue); Retail Sales (Wed);  the CPI, Jobless Claims (Thu); GDP, the PCE, and Existing Home Sales (Fri).  

Radio:  This Friday (12/19), at approximately 9:20a, I will give Bill Wills my Top 10 Economic Stories of the Year.  You can listen at 1100am on your radio dial.   

* 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.