This past week was a very rough one for much of the market, as the S&P was down 0.55%, the Dow was down 1.83%, and the Russell was down a whopping 3.27% on a week-over-week basis. However, the Nasdaq managed to eke out a gain, ending the week up 0.32%. This largely downward move in the market was the result of some worse-than-anticipated earnings releases and an overall market cooldown, as we had nearly a month of incredible gains in November.
Last week, we saw very few upsets in terms of the economic data that was released. CPI and core CPI came in line with expectations, whereas PPI came in a bit higher than expectations and core PPI was a bit lower than expectations. Although the actual PPI data deviated from what analysts were expecting, the deviations weren’t meaningful, which means that inflation shouldn’t be an issue in the near-term future. However, we never know what the long-term future holds.
This week will be an incredibly busy week, starting with retail sales on Tuesday, followed by housing starts, building permits, and the FOMC interest rate decision on Wednesday. We then see the second revision of Q3 GDP and existing home sales on Thursday, and we wrap the week up on Friday with PCE, personal income, personal spending, and consumer sentiment.
As we all know, the big event this week is going to be the FOMC interest rate decision. Depending on both the decision itself and the commentary around the decision, the market will likely move drastically one way or another. Should things go south, we’ll likely see some great buying opportunities through the back half of the week, going into Christmas!
This week, we have some relatively important earnings reports leading up to Christmas week, such as:
12/17 – Heico Corporation (HEI/HEI.A)
12/18 – Micron Technology (MU), Lennar (LEN/LEN.B), General Mills (GIS), Jabil (JBL), Birkenstock (BIRK)
12/19 – Accenture (ACN), Nike (NKE), Cintas (CTAS), FedEx (FDX), Paychex (PAYX), Darden Restaurants (DRI), FactSet Research Systems (FDS), CarMax (KMX), ConAgra Brands (CAG)
12/20 – Carnival Corporation (CCL/CUK)
This week, everyone will be paying attention to what NKE has to say on their earnings report. The stock has been struggling lately, as the consumer has seemingly cut back in recent quarters. However, this earnings release will likely be a turning point for NKE, as they will likely provide commentary as to how they performed throughout the holiday shopping season.
Monitoring the market conditions this week.
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