The S&P 500 is on track to close flat for the week as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell took a hawkish tone when speaking at the Jackson Hole Symposium this morning.
In this week’s economic reports, existing home sales fell to one of the lowest levels of the past 30 years while new home sales reached a 17-month high. The dichotomy between new and existing home sales continues to be driven by new homes accounting for a larger portion of total inventory compared to history. However, mortgage rates hit a new 22-year high this week, which will be a headwind for housing market activity in the coming months. Additionally, Consumer Sentiment from the University of Michigan was essentially unchanged this month as inflation expectations for the year ahead ticked up from 3.4% to 3.5%.
On the technical front, market leadership remained relatively negative this week in a continued indication of underlying market risk. As a result, the bearish Distribution component of our Negative Leadership Composite is still on track to emerge in the coming weeks unless market leadership improves. We’re also closely monitoring sell offs in a number of speculative indexes –including our Canary (in the coal mine) Index– for confirmation that investor psychology is unwinding.
There are no changes to the Model Fund Portfolio this week.
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