Summer Break Ends
My last post to you in mid-June began a six-week break from writing and it seems fitting to catch up on what has happened over that period. When I posted my last weekly review the Dow Jones stood at 16,775, the S&P 500 was 1,936, and the global market as measured by the MSCI EAFE index was 1,967 with the Emerging Markets at 1,049. How has the summer treated the world equity markets? The answer was fine…until this Thursday. The DJIA closed the week at 16,493, down 1.7% since I last wrote; the S&P 500 closed at 1,925, down 0.5%; and finally the global emerging markets have continued to improve and are up 0.8% since mid-June (maybe it was that World Cup thing that happened in Brazil). Had it not been for one bad trading day on Thursday, when the Dow Industrials dropped 300 points, the markets would all have been higher. I am not ready to let one trading date spoil an entire summer holiday so let’s look deeper into the economy for any positive signs.