It seems like when we go through difficult times, it brings out the best in people but it also brings out the worst. I know firsthand about amazing and heroic and selfless behavior from people in my community and around the country. It's a wonderful thing to see and it makes me have faith [...]
US payrolls grew month over month in January following a brief dip into negative territory in December. Peering under the hood, though, this report did little to dispel the notion that the labor market’s recovery has been stalling out, and likely bolsters calls for additional fiscal stimulus. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics released its [...]
US and International Equities The S&P 500 Index gave back some gains in September after a strong five-month run, with most sectors finishing in the red. The utilities and materials sectors were the exceptions, both gaining for the month. The sectors with the largest pullbacks this past month were energy, communication services, information technology, and [...]
We continue to follow high-frequency data to assess whether the US recovery remains on track or if it has been derailed by COVID-19 outbreaks in parts of the country. Here we look at 5 charts that illustrate that the economic recovery remains on track and help explain why stocks continue to do so well despite [...]
We check in again today on some of the real-time economic data that LPL Research is monitoring to provide insight into how the latest increase in COVID-19 cases and the rollback of certain reopening measures are affecting the state of the US economy, as traditional monthly and quarterly economic data are too slow to pick [...]
We continue to follow our Road to Recovery Playbook for help determining where the market is in its bottoming process and yesterday we upgraded Signal #1, confidence in timing of a peak in new COVID-19 cases, to “Already there.” “Three of the five signals from our Road to Recovery Playbook are now in place,” said LPL Financial Equity Strategist [...]
Headlines had oil selling at -$37.63 per barrel at close on Monday, April 20. The negative sign in front? Sellers had to pay buyers $37.63 to take the oil off their hands. Except this wasn’t the price of oil. It was the price of a useful financial instrument, called a futures contract, in this case [...]
The economic damage inflicted by the current COVID-19 pandemic has been unprecedented, with thousands of businesses temporarily shuttered and millions of workers out of work. While the historic drop in economic activity is real and will be reflected in the second quarter gross domestic product (GDP) numbers, some nuances in the way GDP is reported [...]
Factor #1 in our Road to Recovery Playbook is finding confidence in the peak of COVID-19 cases in the United States. At LPL Research we are monitoring this factor daily, and we wanted to provide an update into what we are seeing. As shown in the LPL Chart of the Day, while the number of [...]
As COVID-19-related fear continues grip global financial markets, we wanted to take a closer look at factor #1 in our Road to Recovery Playbook: confidence in the timing of a peak of new COVID-19 cases in the United States. This is probably the most difficult signal in the playbook to call with any degree of [...]
