A Week in the Rearview – week ending 9/3/2010
In the headlines
A look at some of the market movers from the week:
- Intel agreed to buy Infineon’s wireless business for $1.4 billion
- Sanofi-Aventis offered $69 per share to acquire biotech Genzyme
- Japan took measures to combat the rising yen and a sluggish economy
- Steelmaker Posco paid $2.8 billion for a 68% stake in steel and crude trader Daewoo
- The bidding war for storage-maker 3Par ended with Hewlett-Packard paying $2.4 billion
- Taiwan regulators blocked an attempt by AIG to sell its Nan Shan Life Insurance unit
- Exelon paid $900 million for Deere’s wind energy business
- Hedge funds are putting pressure on insurer Ambac
- India’s economy grew at the fastest pace since 2007 in the second quarter
- Amazon joined the growing number of companies trying to deliver TV and movies over the internet
- The SEC opted against charging Moody’s with fraud over its ratings
- Meeting minutes from the Federal Reserve left it unclear whether easier monetary policy is imminent
- Petrobras agreed to pay the Brazilian government $42.5 billion for five billion barrels of deepwater oil reserves
- GE may be readying to spend up to $30 billion on takeovers in the next few years
- Another Gulf of Mexico rig explosion threatens to lengthen the government-imposed drilling ban
- Goldcorp agreed to pay $3.4 billion for Andean Resources
- Burger King agreed to sell itself to 3G Capital in a deal valued at $4 billion
- AIG filed with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange to list its Asian life insurance unit
- ADP reported a surprise drop in private-sector jobs
- The government’s report on private sector jobs showed better-than-expected gains
Commentary
The market closed the books on August with a whimper — the S&P 500 index was flat on Tuesday — but the last day of the month couldn’t have come soon enough for investors as the index slide nearly 5% in August. The first few days of September have been another matter though, with the S&P shooting up 5.3% by Friday’s close. The brisk gains brought the index’s year-to-date loss to just less than 1%.
After economic concerns fueled August’s losses, it was stronger-than-expected economic releases that drove the gains this week. Though ADP’s employment report on Wednesday was softer than anticipated, the Institute of Supply Management’s index was above both expectations and July’s reading. On Thursday, initial unemployment claims came in lower than expected and pending home sales were much better than expected.
The cap to the week’s economic news, though, was the employment report from the Department of Labor. Total nonfarm payrolls fell by 54,000 in August thanks to continued shedding of census workers by the government. That drop, however, was much less than the 120,000 decline that was anticipated. That was due to the fact that 67,000 private-sector jobs were added in August — more than the 44,000 expected.
But that’s not where the good news ended. The DoL also reported that average hourly earnings were up 0.3% versus the 0.1% estimates. And while the average workweek for all employees was unchanged at 34.2 hours, it rose 0.1 hours for the manufacturing sector and factory overtime was up by a similar amount. In addition, employment numbers were revised for both June and July, reducing job losses for those months by 46,000 and 77,000, respectively.
Of course the more encouraging economic news of the past week brings the Federal Reserve into the fore once again. Another highlight of the economic calendar over the past week was the minutes from the Fed’s most recent rate-setting meeting. Unsurprisingly, the Fed’s view of the economic recovery dimmed since the previous meeting as measures from employment to housing and overall economic growth pointed to slower growth.
As we saw at the close of the prior week, the mere suggestion that the Fed still has arrows left in its quiver that can help boost the economy seems to be enough to comfort investors. But with better numbers coming out, the probability that the Fed decides to use those arrows drops. Based on the meeting minutes, members of the board seem reluctant to pull out more stops unless the expansion continues to pitch downward.
If economic reports continue to look like they did this past week, we may not be able to count on the Fed stepping in with any more stimulus. Of course, a stronger recovery is a positive in itself and should be seen by investors as a better outcome than further Fed stimulus.
Looking ahead
September has begun and that brings us to the last third of the third quarter — in other words, ever closer to the start of the next earnings-reporting season. Prior to the kick-off of third quarter reporting we may get some market-moving pre-announcements, but other than that earnings shouldn’t play too prominently in the market’s wiggles.
After a heady week for economic reports last week, there won’t be a whole lot to look at next week. The Fed releases its beige book report on Wednesday and we’ll see initial unemployment claims on Thursday, but other than that, investors are unlikely to pay too much attention to the economic reports.
Merger and acquisition activity has perked up considerably lately, and it seems likely that we may see some more action in the first couple days of next week. Pundits will also likely continue picking apart the numbers that came out this week, while investors digest the big gains that the market registered during the back half of this week.
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