A Week in the Rearview - week ending 8/15/08
In the headlines
A look at some of the market movers over the past week:
- Apollo Management (Nasdaq: AINV), GSO Capital, and TPG are buying some $8 billion of leveraged loans from Royal Bank of Scotland
- The extra measures to prevent naked short selling expired on Tuesday
- NBC, a GE (NYSE: GE) subsidiary, is capitalizing on its Olympic coverage
- Swiss bank UBS (NYSE: UBS) posted another big quarterly loss and announced that it will split its wealth management and investment banking divisions
- Wachovia (NYSE: WB) joined JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) and others in settling with investors over auction rate securities
- Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) much hyped new revision to the iPhone seems to be selling even better than had been expected
- Goldman Sachs‘ (NYSE: GS) stock took a hit as rival investment banks downgraded the stock due to Goldman’s high amount of exposure to global equity markets
- CVS (NYSE: CVS) announced the acquisition of Longs Drug Stores (NYSE: LDG)
- H&R Block (NYSE: HRB) announced the sale of its financial advisory business to Ameriprise Financial (NYSE: AMP)
- Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) posted solid profit growth and raised its full year outlook
- General Motors‘ (NYSE: GM) shares suffered after Moody’s (NYSE: MCO) cut their debt rating
- Retail sales fell, largely thanks to lower auto purchases
- Inflation readings continued their upward march
- Famed hedge fund manager George Soros made a big bet on Brazil’s Petrobras (NYSE: PBR)
- Existing home sales are still not showing a bottom
Commentary
Amidst a slew of earnings and economic data, the market stayed basically flat this week. The 1.2% drop on Tuesday was the largest move of the week and was balanced out by moderate up days on Monday, Thursday, and Friday.
Uncertainty is still the buzzword in the market. Financial companies are having a major pull on the indexes and investor sentiment in general, as it’s yet unclear whether they have already recognized the worst of their losses. At the same time, investors still aren’t sure what to make of the broader economy. Currently it is teetering on verge of recession, but there isn’t a consensus on which direction it is headed.
Meanwhile inflation continues to climb ever higher on screaming food and energy prices. The 5.6% year-over-year increase reported this week is far above the reported “comfort zone” of the Federal Reserve. Investors, however, have been feeling more sanguine about inflation lately due to the heavy drop in oil and other commodity prices.
Looking ahead
After such a busy week this week, next week will be somewhat lighter — at least when it comes to economic and earnings reports.
We still have a couple weeks of relatively heavy earnings reports left, but the atmosphere seems to be winding down as compared to the beginning of the reporting season. Next week will bring some big names like Home Depot (NYSE: HD) and Gap (NYSE: GPS), but we can probably count on the financial companies continuing to steal most of the spotlight.
On the economic front, reports will be much lighter and what we will see next week will be of lower consequence than what we’ve been getting the past couple weeks. Because of the moderating energy prices, investors will likely overlook the producer price index unless it is far above expectations or core PPI makes a big jump. The weekly initial claims and crude inventory reports could prove to be the highlights of the week.
My expectation is that media attention and market sentiment next week will more likely be set by one-off reports from Wall Street and media analysts. These will be of similar content to the reports we’ve been getting for the past year — someone either saying that financial stocks have bottomed or they haven’t or else saying that the US is either in a recession or it’s not. Trying to keep up with the myriad opinions out there on these topics is probably not worth your time since by the time you finish reading one opinion somebody else publishes another opinion that contradicts it in whole.
The best plan for your retirement money right now is to keep it invested according to a diversified allocation, and continue adding to it on a regular basis. The best plan for your psyche is to take the market’s crazy gyrations with a grain of salt — or else stop looking altogether.
