Weekly Market Snapshot

An agreement on the U.S. debt ceiling was approved this week by both the House and Senate
ending weeks of negotiation. The deal suspends the debt ceiling limit until January of 2025 and sets a cap on non-defense spending in 2024.

The U.S. debt ceiling weighed on the markets early in the week but as of the weekend,
the President and House Leaders reached an agreement to suspend the limit for two years and lower certain government spending. The bill is scheduled to go to the House Rules Committee on Tuesday before going to the full House for a vote on Wednesday.

Despite stalled discussions on Friday, talks are expected to resume on Monday between the President and House Leaders regarding the U.S. debt ceiling limit. Conversations were unproductive over the past week as both sides cannot agree on spending levels and the duration of spending caps.

Concerns over the U.S. debt ceiling limit weighed on the markets this week as the meeting between President Biden and Congressional leaders produced no results on Tuesday and a Friday meeting was postponed.

May kicked off with a large slate of economic news most notably a widely expected move by the Federal Reserve raising the federal funds rate by another 25 basis points.

The equity markets closed out April on a positive note, but uncertainty remains as to the outlook for the economy. In addition to a large slate of earnings reports, there were several data releases that continue to paint a mixed picture...

Despite many earnings reports during the week, the equity markets were little changed with all three indices showing slightly negative returns. The U.S. housing market drew a lot of attention this week when the National Association of Realtors announced that home prices in March had fallen for the second month in a row...

This week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) report was in line with expectations with a yearly increase of 5.0%, while the Core CPI, which excludes food and gasoline prices, moved slightly higher to 5.6%. While both metrics seem to indicate moderating inflation, the readings remain above Federal Reserve’s target inflation rate of 2.0%...

The job market was the focus of the past week due to several reports which reflected some easing of pressure in the employment picture. The JOLTS report (Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics gained attention on Wednesday when it announced that current U.S. job openings fell below 10 million, a figure not seen since 2021...

The first quarter of 2023 closed on a positive note with all three major equity indices up for the week. The markets rallied on Friday following the release of the core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index for February. This preferred inflation metric of the Federal Reserve came in slightly below expectations with a year over year gain of 4.6%, below last month’s reading of 5.4%.