DID YOU KNOW……
Major stock indexes backed off the 2023 highs they hit on Thursday but ended the week higher, lifted by the Federal Reserve’s decision to pause its interest-rate increases as well as data showing U.S. consumer confidence and spending is picking up.
The S&P 500 notched its fifth consecutive weekly gain, the longest such streak since autumn 2021, before the Fed began raising borrowing costs to cool inflation. The tech-loaded Nasdaq Composite had its eighth consecutive weekly gain, which hasn’t happened since early 2019, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Treasury yields edged higher as well. The 10-year yield rose to 3.768%, from 3.727% on Thursday.
Investors have braced for recession for more than a year while the Fed raised interest rates at the fastest pace since the early 1980s, but are warming to the possibility that inflation can be tamed without tanking the economy. The central bank held borrowing costs steady on Wednesday but suggested that it would continue its inflation fight with two more rate increases this year.
Data this week showed U.S. consumer confidence and spending have risen despite the sharp climb in borrowing costs.
On Friday, the University of Michigan’s consumer-confidence survey registered 63.9 for June, up from 59.2 in May and above Wall Street’s expectation of 60. On Thursday, Commerce Department data showed retail spending rose 0.3% in May, compared with April. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected a 0.2% decline. (WSJ)
DID YOU KNOW…..On today’s date in:
1682 English Quaker William Penn founds Philadelphia, in the Pennsylvania Colony
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1778 British Redcoats evacuate Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and head for New York
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1812 War of 1812 begins as US declares war against Britain
1815 Battle of Waterloo; Napoleon and France defeated by British forces under Wellington
1912 The Chicago national Republican Convention splits between President Taft and Theodore Roosevelt; after Taft is nominated, Roosevelt and progressive elements of the Party form the Progressive Party (also known as the ‘Bull Moose Party’)
1928 American aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the 1st woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean, landing at Burry Port, Wales
1940 General Charles de Gaulle makes his first speech on the BBC to the French people, since arriving in London, an appeal to defy Nazi occupiers – regarded as the beginning of French Resistance during WWII
1940 Winston Churchill gives his “this was their finest hour” speech to the House of Commons urging perseverance in the war after the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France
1942 Paul McCartney, British rock singer-songwriter, bassist, piano player (The Beatles – “Yesterday”; “I Will”; Wings -“Silly Love Songs”), born in Liverpool, England
• 1948 National Security Council authorizes covert operations for 1st time
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1959 Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital’s director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane
1960 US Open Men’s Golf, Cherry Hills CC: Arnold Palmer stages greatest comeback in tournament history; erases a 7-stroke final round deficit to win his only US Open title by 2 strokes ahead of Jack Nicklaus
• 1967 US Open Men’s Golf, Baltusrol GC: Jack Nicklaus shoots a final round 65 for a new tournament record 275, 4 strokes ahead of Arnold Palmer
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1979 US President Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign SALT II treaty limiting nuclear weapons
1980 Indian “human computer” Shakuntala Devi sets a world record by mentally multiplying two random 13-digit numbers in 28 seconds; She correctly answered that 7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 = 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730
1983 7th Shuttle Mission-Challenger 2 launches Sally Ride as 1st US woman in space
2020 US Supreme Court rules the Obama-era Dreamers Program (DACA), enabling undocumented migrant children ability to study and work, can stay
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2020 Vera Lynn, British popular music singer, known as ‘the Forces’ Sweetheart’ (“We’ll Meet Again”; “The White Cliffs of Dover”), dies at 103 (OnThisDay)
DID YOU KNOW….. An apparent rebound in the residential housing market could impact the Federal Reserve’s inflation fight, with home prices “leveling out” even as the U.S. central bank awaits the impact of falling rents on headline inflation data, Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said on Wednesday.
Fed policymakers have for several months said they were counting on easing rental inflation to eventually lower the headline inflation numbers, since rents are factored into the data using a yearly average.
But potentially offsetting that, “the residential real estate market appears to be rebounding,” Bowman said.
When the Fed began to signal it was going to raise rates in the fall of 2021, and then followed through with an aggressive rate hiking cycle that kicked off in March of the following year, home mortgage rates also escalated.
A slowdown in sales and a drop in prices followed.
But that process may have reached a bottom, with the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national index of home prices rising in February and March on a month-over-month basis.
Building starts and permits may have also reached their low points, and sentiment among home builders has been improving. (Reuters)
DID YOU KNOW….. The share of sales in Marblehead which took place over list price dropped from 81% in June 2022 to a low of 13% in January 2023 and just 3% in February 2023, but has since rebounded to 75% in May (OliverReportsMA)
DID YOU KNOW……. Before he became president, Abraham Lincoln was wrestling champion of his county in Illinois. He fought in nearly 300 matches and lost only one.(BlackBeltMag)
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