A Week in the Rearview – week ending 5/8/09
In the headlines
A look at some of the market movers over the past week:
- Unemployment climbed to 8.9% even as new job losses slowed
- The Federal Reserve released results of the much anticipated banking stress tests
- General Motor’s future remains murky whether or not it ends up in bankruptcy
- Warren Buffett addressed shareholders at the annual Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
- More banks joined the list of 2009 failures
- President Obama announced tax changes for U.S. companies that operate internationally
- The Federal Trade Commission set its sights on Google and Apple
- Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke made some hopeful comments about the U.S. economy
- Chrysler received approval for its bankruptcy plans
- The chairman of the New York Federal Reserve resigned amidst conflict of interest questions
- AIG reported its smallest loss in six quarters
- Fannie Mae is looking for more government aid after another large quarterly loss
Commentary
The market looked positively unstoppable this week as the S&P 500 index charged ahead despite the release of data that could easily have been painted as negative. The S&P index finished up 5.9% for the week, which brings the gains since the low in March to 39.5%. The week’s action also turned the index positive year to date to the tune of 2.9%.
Besides the bull charge of the stock market, there were two major stories for investors to chew on during the week. The first was the release of the results of the government’s banking stress tests.
A group of entities led by the Federal Reserve undertook the tests in an effort to figure out which banks would be in trouble in the next two years if economic conditions were worse than currently expected. They did this by creating two scenarios — a base case and a more adverse case — and asked banks to project income and loan losses under both scenarios. Based on the results, the regulators asked certain banks to come up with plans to raise new capital to give them an extra cushion against losses.
The end result of the stress tests was that the 19 have been asked to raise $75 billion in total new capital — though a large number of the banks didn’t need any new capital. Even though the tests showed that as much as $600 billion in further loan losses could be possible, investors largely took the results as good news. The primary positive points that were taken from the tests were that losses don’t look as bad as many had feared, and the results of the tests showed that the government has little interest in fully nationalizing any of the major banks.
Unemployment numbers were also released during the week, and the headline unemployment rate reached 8.9%, the highest since the early 1980s. While the level of unemployment is cause for concern, the market seemed to focus primarily on the fact that new job losses appear to be slowing.
This improvement in the “second derivate,” as many are calling it, is encouraging — after all, a slowing in the deterioration certainly seems like a step towards renewed growth. However, 8.9% unemployment is a very high level, and there isn’t yet talk of big improvements in that level in the near future. These and other economic indicators have led some to believe that the market may be in for a correction in the short-term.
The strength of the market over the past week though, should be taken in context. Market participants tend to anticipate the future rather than try to react to what’s going on at the moment. The rally that we’ve seen then, shouldn’t be taken as a positive reaction to 8.9% unemployment or the need for major banks to raise capital, but rather a positive outlook on what today’s data could mean for the end of this year or May of next year.
Looking ahead
As I noted last week, we’ve crossed over the point in earnings season where the market is watching the numbers with bated breath. At this point investors have digested earnings season broadly as having some bad numbers, but not nearly as bad as some expected. Individual stocks will certainly bounce around as they report, but there aren’t going to be too many earnings reports that will shake the entire market.
On the economic front, the two most pressing reports next week will be retail sales and the consumer price index. Consumer spending makes up the vast bulk of the U.S.’s GDP and so retail sales is a key measure of how the broader economy will perform. That number will hit the wires on Wednesday.
The consumer price index is a measure of price inflation in the U.S. and is always an important data point, though infinitely more so right now. The Federal Reserve has been lowering interest rates and extending credit in an effort to stave off deflation — where prices fall — as deflation is generally considered to be a tough-to-cure economic plague.
An increase in the consumer price index would signal that the Fed’s efforts are paying off and could foreshadow a return to economic growth. The expected flat reading may not be overly bullish, but it would be a step in the right direction after last month’s 0.1% drop.
At the same time, the market will also be monitoring that CPI number to make sure that it doesn’t start increasing out of control. While many economists believe high inflation to be easier to deal with than deflation, neither is good for the economy.
The primary chatter for next week is likely to be around the financial companies and the stock market rally. With so much riding on the recovery of the financial system, and so much new data brought to light through the stress tests, we’re likely to have continued discussion and debate into next week about what is ahead for the nation’s big banks.
The stock market rally may have been initially sparked by economic and news releases, but at this point the rally itself is bigger news than much of the news that appears to be driving it. As psychology can often play a big role in major market moves like this — whether it’s to the upside or downside — we can expect at this point that sentiment will play a significant part in determining whether the rally continues or stalls.
