It’s June! It’s June! Soon schools will be out and cicadas from Brood XIV will be coming to a sidewalk near you (in the Midwest and East). Yay!
In other news, there isn’t much other news. We had Monday off last week for Memorial Day, and investment people apparently forgot to return to work for the rest of the week. Stock markets dithered, but closed up for the month of May – with the Standard & Poor’s 500 now positive for the year.
Tariff news was up, down, and sideways. The U.S. agreed to a postponement of tariffs against the E.U., a federal trade court ruled that the president didn’t have the authority to impose across-the-board tariffs, and then President Trump doubled the tariff on steel to 50%. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has described trade negotiations with China as “a bit stalled.”
Reuters reported that the trade war has cost U.S. companies more than $34 billion in lost sales and higher costs – a toll that is only expected to grow.
And JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has expressed his great concern over the national debt, fearing that if our debt and deficit are not addressed soon, it may cause disruption in the bond markets.
The May jobs report will be released on Friday, and all eyes will be watching. It will be the first month that the trade tariffs will have a real effect on employment. Watch this space.
For the week ending on May 30th, the S&P 500 finished at 5,911, the Nasdaq Composite at 19,113, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 42,470. The yield on the ten-year Treasury Note closed at 4.416%. U.S. crude oil cost $63.46 per barrel, N.Y. gold cost $3,289.00 per ounce, and one Euro was worth $1.14.
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) The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post. USA Today, The Economist, Barron’s, MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance, Axios, CNN, CNBC, Reuters, The Associated Press, UPI, 1440 Digest, and Bloomberg. If you have questions, please call us at 203.458.5220, or reply to this email to reach me, Liz Cook.
Air-traffic-control outages, short-staffing, and runway construction have caused delays and cancellations at Newark Airport. And due to a drop in demand, United Airlines is dropping fares. The CEO of United has announced that this will be the cheapest summer to fly out of Newark in the history of the airline. But when you fly, do you really want to go with the lowest-cost provider? There ARE other airports!