Half Full Glass of Markets

What impact did the week have on the market?

• Flat Market with Rise in Yields:

The major U.S. stock indexes were little changed for the week, trading in a fairly narrow range. That’s in keeping with the market’s mostly flat profile over the summer; the gap between the S&P 500’s peak and low points since late June has been less than 5%.

Concerns about the potential for further interest-rate increases continued to weigh on prices of U.S. government bonds, and the yield of the 2-year U.S. Treasury climbed back above 5.00% level that it had breached in late August. The yield of the 10-year Treasury rose on Friday to around 4.33%, near its year-to-date high set in August.???

Source: Seeking Alpha

• Inflation’s Persistence:

The main benchmark of U.S. inflation climbed at its fastest pace since mid-2022, as the Consumer Price Index rose at an annual rate of 3.7% in August and 0.6% on a month-to-month basis. Higher energy prices fueled much of the increase; excluding energy and food prices, core inflation rose at a more modest 0.3% on a month-to-month basis.??

Source: The Motley Fool

• Calming Trend:

An index that tracks investors’ expectations of short-term U.S. equity market volatility fell on Thursday to the lowest since late 2019, before the pandemic triggered a spike in the Cboe Volatility Index. Although the so-called VIX edged upward on Friday, it was still down about 36% year to date.?

Source: CNN Business

Check out the Top 5 stocks in each industry:

What to expect for the markets next week?

• Fed Ahead: The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to leave its benchmark interest rate unchanged at its two-day policy meeting that’s scheduled to end on Wednesday. At its most recent meeting in late July, the Fed approved an increase of a quarter-percentage point to a range between 5.25% and 5.50%—the 11th hike since March 2022.

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• More Earnings: The Bank of England (BoE) will hold its own policy meeting on Thursday. We’ll also get the latest updates on the housing market, including building permits, housing starts, and existing home sales for August, and the NAHB’s Housing Market Index for September.