After a good first two days of the week, stocks really mailed in Wednesday through Friday. Small Caps listed from 6% up at the open on Tuesday to a week end performance of 2%, not that I am complaining; an up week is always good. International and Emerging Markets stocks finished essentially flat for the week, which was an accomplishment given where they started Monday.
Momentum and Growth stocks were the clear winners this week while Value and Small Cap (no surprise) were clear losers relative to the broad market.
Fixed Income products had a fine to good with, with lower rated securities benefiting most from the Fed, while aggregate funds saw lower gains.
On the commodity side, Oil continues to climb after a brief period negative earlier in the year. The price dislocation in Oil in mid April strikes me as one of the more egregious investment overreactions that I’ve ever seen. In the matter of a few weeks market perception about Oil went from “it’s a weak economy and things are shut down” to “no one will ever use oil again! The world is going to end and we are headed back to the Flintstones”
But, those forecasts proved a bit early and Oil futures are up over 170% since the beginning of May.
Next week sees Existing Home Sales, New Home Sales, Initial Jobless Claims (who needs jobs anyway), and revised Q1 GDP.
On the earnings side we get to hear from Nike and KB Homes among others.
Nathan