thependulumswings

Friends

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that we try to temper our enthusiasm on up days, and try not to get too disturbed by down days. The up days are great, and mostly they have been fueled by Fed liquidity, then down days happen and we focus back on how difficult this all is to predict and quantify. It’s a battle between the Fed’s liquidity and the reality that the economy is almost totally shut down at the moment. Today, worries about the economy had the upper hand.

For the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 445 points to close at 23,504. The S&P 500 was down 62 points to finish the day at 2,783. Gold was down $22 to trade at $1,746 per ounce, while oil was up $.33 to trade at $20.42 per barrel WTI.

We continue to get decent news on the flattening of the virus curve, but we are getting mixed signals about when we will be able to reopen the economy. Today it seemed like the angst over opening the economy too soon and perhaps seeing a resurgence of the virus overshadowed the benefits of getting the economy back open. This is going to be a rocky road ahead, and markets will likely see good days and bad, so we won’t get too encouraged or discouraged on a daily basis. Corporate earnings are rolling out now, and, not surprisingly, they are going to be a mess.

We sent out a video today. If you missed it, we linked it again below. We’re hoping these will be helpful.

Have a nice evening everyone.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nViUyh4WsdM?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&showinfo=0&w=1200&h=900]

Jim