Roller coaster week for stocks

There was a ton of economic data this week to digest, and it was a volatile trade in the equity markets. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell had his monthly press conference announcing that interest rates would remain unchanged this month. He re-iterated that the goal is 2% inflation using the Personal Consumption Expenditure as his measure, which has been 2.5% for the past 12 months. (The Consumer Price Index has been at 3% for the past 12 months.)

The door has been open for an interest rate cut as early as September and that door remained open this week, with Powell neither confirming nor denying the potential of a rate cut but that it would be decided meeting by meeting.

Equity bulls initially took the ball and ran with it after Powell’s presser, with both the Dow and S&P rallying 1.5% in total initially, while the Nasdaq was up more than 3% on the day. The rally didn’t last long, however, as the next day (Thursday) removed all the gains and the losses are continuing as of Friday, with all three markets down more than 2% as of the writing of this, making new lows for the week.

A softer than expected jobs report on Friday pushed the unemployment rate to 4.3% as compared to 4.1% last month. The July jobs report continues a trend in data of what looks to be a cooling economy and there are some voicing concerns that the Fed might be exercising too much patience in cutting interest rates.

The threat of a recession has been looming for the better part of two years and the economy has managed to stay strong enough to put it well past the point for the early doomsday predictors to be able to say, “I told you so.”

That doesn’t mean there isn’t still a tangible threat. The debate over the ability to bring inflation down without crashing the economy started as a soft landing vs. a hard landing discussion that evolved into what will probably be a long landing. In any case, a landing at some point that proves uncomfortable for equity bulls still seems like a decent bet.

But a good portion of equity bears and doomsday predictors might not survive long enough to gloat about it when it finally happens. Some things never change.

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