So, the government reopened, but not in time for us to get October jobs numbers. September’s jobs report may still be released but who knows when and whether it will be complete. Wouldn’t it be funny if the whole point of the shutdown was to hide bad jobs numbers? No. No it wouldn’t. And it’s not funny that the spending bill that was passed to end the shutdown only funds the government until the end of January. (Key agencies are funded through next October.) During the long winter nights, we will apparently have more government shenanigans to enjoy.
In other news, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 48,000 for the first time last week before pulling back. Stock prices overall were up and down all week and closed only slightly changed. Fear of AI-stock over-valuation continued (and led the Nasdaq Composite Index lower), but “buy the dip” helped close the gap.
Meanwhile, the bond market “is on pace for its strongest year since 2020, returning 6.7% in one widely tracked index,” per the Wall Street Journal. It’s strange for the bond markets to rally while the stock markets do too. If you remember your intro to investments class, you will know that there are three buckets in which you can invest: cash, debt, and equity. Usually funds flow among them, pushing one category temporarily ahead of the others. But we’ve had a lot of cash on the sidelines for a while now, and with long-term bond rates expected to fall further (eventually), people may be choosing to invest in bonds while rates are still relatively high.
The odds of a Federal Reserve rate cut in December are slipping – largely due to the Fed’s inability to obtain dependable government data on jobs and inflation. And rather than react in darkness, it now appears about equally possible that the Fed will do nothing in December and then wait for its next meeting in late January.
The government has floated the idea of a 50-year mortgage to help first-time homebuyers and others who are priced out of the housing market. There are a couple of problems. Assuming that the 50-year mortgage rate is slightly higher than the 30-year rate (as the 30-year rate is higher than the 15-year rate), borrowers would save very little on their monthly payments but would pay WAY more in monthly interest. Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte called it “a complete game changer.” Yes – but not in a good way.
In shocking international news, a Bangladesh war-crimes court sentenced “ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to death” after she was found guilty of ordering a “deadly crackdown on a student-led uprising last year. (Reuters) I’m ashamed to admit that I was not paying much attention to Bangladesh last year, but it has certainly captured my attention now.
I have proof that if you don’t play, you don’t win. Friday’s Mega Millions lottery drawing rewarded one lucky winner with $980 million after he made the wise move to buy the winning ticket. I, sadly, assumed again that I could win without buying a ticket. Lesson learned.
The last penny was minted last week after 238 years as legal currency. It had become unwise to keep making cents when it cost almost four to make a one-cent coin. No one knows what is going to happen at cash registers as a result. I wonder how much money it takes to make a penny candy?
For the week ending on November 14th, the Dow finished at 47,147, the Nasdaq at 22,900, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 at 6,734. The yield on the ten-year Treasury was little changed at 4.148%. U.S. crude oil cost $60.24 per barrel, N.Y. gold cost $4,015.35 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.16.
Elizabeth E. Cook
Partner, Diastole Wealth Management
News and information presented here was gathered from sources believed, but not guaranteed, to be reliable, including (but not limited to) Barron’s, Yahoo Finance, Morning Brew, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters, Axios, CNN, Business Insider, The Associated Press, and The Hustle. If you have questions, please call Diastole at 203.458.5220, or reply to this email to reach me, Liz Cook.
Would you buy a used toilet? Would you buy a used SOLID-GOLD toilet? And would you pay $10 million for it? That’s the expected starting bid for Maurizio Cattelan’s “America” – a fully functioning gold toilet that was installed in the Guggenheim Museum in 2016 and subsequently used by more than 100,000 museumgoers. It will be auctioned by Sotheby’s tomorrow. You may remember Maurizio Cattelan for his banana-taped-to-a-wall art piece, which sold for $6.2 million a year ago. The question is not why Cattelan keeps making these artworks, but why they continue to sell. (Note to lottery-winning guy: you can afford this now.)