2020 was an extraordinary year for the Federal Reserve (Fed). The Fed responded swiftly and decisively to the rapidly accelerating financial and economic uncertainty brought on by efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. The current Fed was helped by precedents and policies created during the 2008-09 recession, but also went beyond them to address the [...]
Solid holiday shopping season. Holiday sales grew 3%, beating forecasts for a 2.4% increase according to MasterCard’s SpendingPulse. Online sales rose 49% year over year. These results were impressive for a recessionary period—the comparable figure dropped 3.5% in 2008—and highlight the resiliency of the US consumer and benefits of stimulus. Daily Insights Stocks open higher [...]
“MORE THAN MOST YEARS, it’s hard to look ahead to the next year, to 2021, without looking back at 2020. A global pandemic, a massive economic collapse, a bear market, a surprisingly sharp reversal, a hotly contested election where passions ran high, the impact of lockdowns—it was an unusual year of extraordinary challenges. In [...]
The November reading for the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the most well-known measure of inflation, was released Thursday, December 12, and while both the headline and “core” readings (excluding food and energy) came in slightly higher than the Bloomberg-surveyed economists’ consensus, core inflation remains tame at 1.6% over the trailing year. Inflation is likely to [...]
As we explain in Outlook 2021, we anticipate a strong earnings rebound in 2021 will help stocks grow into their current valuations. “The earnings story isn’t just about 2021,” explained LPL Financial Chief Market Strategist Ryan Detrick. “We see S&P 500 Index earnings per share of $190 by the end of 2022, well above the previous record [...]
As 2020 winds down, it has been an extremely tough year on all of us. Still, there are many reasons to be thankful and today we will share some reasons investors should be thankful. Stocks have had one of the largest reversals ever in 2020, something to be thankful for. In fact, this could be [...]
Stocks just had their best week since April, with the S&P 500 Index incredibly a chip shot away from new all-time highs. Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States, but markets are confident Republicans will maintain the Senate, and this means gridlock in Washington. Remember, gridlock is good, as it pulls [...]
As of Thursday morning, a winner to the 2020 presidential election has yet to be “officially” declared as several battleground states have yet to be called. Even as more clarity emerges from remaining votes being counted in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania today and tomorrow, recounts and legal challenges could draw this out longer. A Democratic [...]
With Election Day a mere five days away, we at LPL Research thought we would add one last election forecaster to the mix of what we’ve presented over the last several months—as much because of what it might tell us about the American electorate as what it might tell us about the election. As shown [...]
The outbreak of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns triggered the largest quarter over-quarter decline in gross domestic product (GDP) since WWII, so perhaps it comes as no surprise that the following quarter tallied the sharpest rebound in that same time period. GDP expanded 33.1% on an annualized basis in the third quarter, ahead of Bloomberg [...]
