Provides a market round up, a selection of useful data points we use for our investment analysis, and some interesting articles/charts we have noticed recently.
Most of the major benchmarks endured a fifth consecutive week of losses as interest rate and inflation worries continued to weigh on sentiment, especially toward growth stocks. The losses briefly pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average into correction territory, down more than 10% from its recent highs, where it joined the S&P 500 and S&P MidCap 400 indexes. The Nasdaq Composite and the small-cap Russell 2000 Index ended the week firmly in bear markets, down more than 25%.
Markets were especially volatile late in the week, although the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) remained slightly below the intraday levels briefly reached in late January, potentially indicating this may be a slow grind sideways (without some new impulse to send markets sharply downward).
It now seems official that a new market regime has formed on the backdrop of a surge in negative earnings IPOs (more than in 2000), Ark Innovation quadrupling in one year then crashing, exorbitant house prices, and an energy/fertiliser crisis that only compounds the inflation issue. The signals from the FED show this regimes only focus: control the Labor market and therefore inflation.
Australian markets fell lower last week alongside their foreign counterparts following the first RBA cash rate rise in 11 years, with the added uncertainty of an election and end of financial year looming. Yet a lot of eyes remain on the housing market and the immense levels of debt associated with it. Suncorp Bank announced it's home lending portfolio increased $803 million, or 1.7 per cent, in the March quarter, with total home lending lodgements 21 per cent higher than the second quarter of 2022. The story is similar at other lenders showing property investors/owners seem un-phased by forecasts of greater than 15% corrections in house prices from the RBA and others.
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