Dour news this week after good news last week leads to flat rates… Last week’s surprising, shockingly, good employment numbers caused interest rates to jump up. New week, new news. The teeter totter economic news gave us a PPI that was down .4% instead of the consensus prediction of .2%, a BIG swing.
Year over year wholesale prices are down 1.6%, a stark difference from a healthy inflation of 2% which is the target that the Fed and the government have in mind. On another note, we consumers are not spending at the pace that would keep the economy healthy. Retail sales were only up .1% in October – so all in all, a sad numbers week. A weak week. Sorry, couldn’t resist. So rates swung back, but stocks were lower. The end of the year we typically see retail sales up and stock trading increase because of year end rebalancing of portfolios for tax reasons. So it tends to get wild. Lock in now!