A Review of the Week’s Most Notable Moments; Stocks do Something They Haven’t Done Since 2008
Photo: Blue Coat
(Thomson Reuters)
The S&P 500 closed down for the eighth straight day on Thursday.
That hasn’t happened since October 2008, during the financial crisis, according to Charlie Bilello, the director of research at Pension Partners.
Stocks have been punctured by a combination of mixed third-quarter earnings results as well as the tightening in the polls ahead of Tuesday’s election.
And the other two major indices, the Dow and the Nasdaq, also finished in the red. But, as Business Insider’s Akin Oyedele noted, what makes this decline slightly more unusual is that normally early November is when we see the best five days of the year.
Although, as we always say, when it comes to the markets, the past does not predict the future.
First up, the scoreboard:
- Dow: 17,930.67, -28.97, (-0.16%)
- S&P 500: 2,088.66, -9.28, (-0.44%)
- Nasdaq: 5,058.41, -47.16, (-0.92%)
- WTI crude oil: $44.62, -$-0.72, (-1.59%)
- The Mexican peso surged after the latest Washington Post/ABC News tracking poll has Hillary Clinton ahead of Donald Trump 47% to 45%. The currency was up by 1.2%, at 19.1520 per dollar, around 3 p.m. ET.
- Initial jobless claims rose slightly, while the number of people filing for unemployment benefits is at a 16-year low. Initial unemployment insurance claims ticked up to 265,000 last week, while continued claims fell by 14,000, to 2.026 million, the Department of Labor said Thursday.
- Fitbit crashed by 30% after missing on sales and cutting its full-year earnings forecast. “We continue to grow and are profitable — however, not at the pace previously expected,” CEO James Park said in the earnings statement on Wednesday.
- Egypt’s central bank floated the pound and hiked rates by 300 basis points in an attempt to curtail the likely resulting inflation. “The much weaker currency is certainly a positive and necessary step over the long term for the economy, but it will be no panacea for Egypt’s economic malaise,” BMI Research analysts wrote.
- Factory orders rose more than expected, according to a report from the Commerce Department. Orders rose by 0.3% in September month-over-month, above economists’ expectations of a 0.2% uptick.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its latest jobs report on Friday — four days ahead of the heated presidential election. “You can be sure that both candidates will capitalize on what they think the report says about the US economy,” Oyedele wrote.
