Happy Sunday, friends! We've had quite the week, haven't we? Silvergate failed, Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, and we saw stress increasing in other banks.
We also had testimony from Chair Powell on Tuesday and Wednesday which we discussed during the Midweek Update as well as on the Traderade+ Discord server if you're interested in learning more.
In the week ahead we'll be watching key economic events like the CPI report, how the Silicon Valley Bank and any related situations that emerge are potentially resolved, a triple witching event including quarterly options expiration, and more. It could be a volatile market!
The week that was ...
We saw another strong Non-Farm Payrolls report, with 311K jobs created vs an expectation of 225K on Friday.
Unexployment rose to 3.6% from 3.4%, perhaps illustrating that new jobs aren't being found as easily as the labor market potentially begins to slow.
Hourly earnings growth slowed to 0.2% from 0.3% month-over-month, helping to reduce some pressure from rising wages on inflationary pressure.
We saw pressure increase in the markets last week, sending the NASDAQ down 4.7%, the hardest hit of the major indices. We also saw oil drop 4%, and bonds catch a tepid bid, up 1%. Though Friday's bond market rally was particularly powerful -- and a bit disconcerting. It smacked of a strong fear bid.
Despite the strong selling pressure that we saw on both Tuesday and Friday, there was nothing particularly disorderly.