A Week in the Rearview – week ending 5/1/09
In the headlines
A look at some of the market movers over the past week:
- Worries about the potential for a full blown influenza pandemic cast a pall over the market
- US automaker Chrysler filed for bankruptcy protection
- As expected, the Federal Reserve left rates where they were
- Bank of America shareholders voted to strip CEO Ken Lewis of his chairmanship
- The squabble over Merrill Lynch’s bonuses continues
- US GDP contracted at a worse-than-expected 6.1% rate in the first quarter
- Four more banks joined the list of 2009 bank failures
- Regulators have told Citigroup and Bank of America that they need to raise more capital, and even more major banks may be in the same boat
- The SEC uncovered yet another fraudulent investment scheme in California
- Deutsche Bank returned to profitability thanks to increased trading income in its investment banking unit
- Verizon and Microsoft may be teaming up to come out with a competitor to the iPhone
- Home prices continued to decline in February, though at a slower pace than in previous months
- Consumer confidence rose considerably in April on hopes that the worst of the economic decline could be behind us
- The Treasury Department said that more than 100 applications have been submitted to take part in the Public-Private Investment Partnership
- Congress approved a $3.5 trillion budget for 2010
- MGM Mirage secured much needed financing to complete its CityCenter project on the Last Vegas Strip
- Standard & Poor’s cut its credit rating on American Express, bringing its preferred stock rating into junk territory
- Disney joined forces with up-and-coming online TV star Hulu
- The release of banking stress tests was postponed, but will still come next week
Commentary
The S&P 500′s winning streak may have ended last week, but that didn’t stop it from getting back to its winning ways this week. Thanks to a marked rally on Wednesday, the index finished the week with a 1.3% gain, bringing the rally from March’s lows to nearly 30% and cutting 2009′s loss to just under 3%.
The market was largely able to shrug off numerous bits of bad news to continue its upward climb. Early in the week, talks seemed to be progressing between Chrysler, the US government, the UAW, and Chrysler’s creditors, but talks broke down later in the week, leading to Chrysler’s bankruptcy filing. Concerns over the so-called “swine flu” also brought some caution to the market as the world health organization appears ready to label the outbreak a pandemic.
Financial companies also played their part in the troublesome news of the week. Rumors swirled that when the government’s stress test results are revealed next week that Bank of America and Citigroup, along with some other major banks, will need to raise additional capital. In addition, Bank of America’s shareholders voted to strip the bank’s CEO, Ken Lewis, of his chairmanship in a rebuke of his handling of recent acquisitions — particularly that of Merrill Lynch.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the reading on first quarter GDP also came in lower than expected, showing the US economy contracting at a 6.1% pace during the quarter.
Yet even with all of this, the sentiment remained that the worst of the economic declines are behind us and that stocks had fallen too far. Stoking this sentiment was the much better than expected report on consumer confidence — a key ingredient of the economic recovery due to the US’ dependence on consumer spending — and some positive commentary from the Federal Reserve when it announced its interest rate decision.
Looking ahead
Earnings will continue to stream out over the next week and there will be a number of major companies reporting earnings. However, we’ve reached that point in earnings season where investors have largely made up their minds about the overall earnings environment — in this case that earnings aren’t as bad as had been expected — and we’re unlikely to see that change with the earnings announcements still to come.
With the close of the month of April, the economic calendar will be full next week. While most economic data closely watched for signs of continued distress or recovery in the economy, the unemployment report is likely to be the highlight of next week’s reports. What will be interesting to watch is how the market reacts if — like the GDP report — unemployment comes in worse than the expected 8.9%.
But it will be hard to trump what will clearly be the big headline of next week — the banking stress tests. The results, which were originally due out Monday, will be released on Thursday. It’s unclear how much additional information we’ll get beyond what has already been leaked, but look for the market to pause ahead of the announcement, and then potentially get concerned if either the banks didn’t perform as well as expected or investors believe the government has withheld much of the key data.
