2019-07-22 Market Commentary MundaneAway-Mitchell Wood from MundaneAway, Inc. on Vimeo.

The major markets experienced a pullback after reaching new all-time highs in a number of the indices early in the week.

Earnings began to become the dominate factor last week as the earnings season ramps up. Only Consumer Staples and Materials managed to close in the green, while Real Estate, Energy, and Communication Services led the pack down.

The Communication Services sector was pulled down significantly due to disappointment in the earnings report for Netflix which fell over 10% in one day and experienced a loss every day last week.

Meanwhile, the losses in Energy were in large part due to the pullback in both Crude Oil and Natural Gas prices. Oil prices have been somewhat volatile lately as there have been several events involving Iran and Western countries’ tankers.  Over the weekend, a second British oil tanker was seized in the Strait of Hormuz as tensions with Iran continues to escalate.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49069083

In interest rate news, two federal reserve officials made a strong case to make significant cuts to the fed funds rate in their public speeches last week.

John C. Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicated that he was open to reducing rates by saying that “It’s better to take preventative measures than to wait for disaster to unfold”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-williams/federal-reserve-officials-lay-out-case-for-aggressive-rate-cuts-idUSKCN1UD2NX

Later, in an email to The Washington Post, Judy Shelton, the presumptive Trump nominee to the Federal Reserve Board, started that she “would have voted for a 50-basis-point cut at the June meeting”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/07/22/trump-fed-nominee-judy-shelton-calls-basis-point-cut-interest-rates-july/?amp;utm_term=.c571595a220e.&noredirect=on&utm_term=.83948ed8da6a

By Friday’s close, U.S. Treasury yields fell again with the 3-month yield at 2.06% while the 10-year closed at 2.05%

This weekend marked the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. An estimated 600 million people watched man set foot on the moon for the first time. During the landing, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin realized that they had overshot the original landing site. As they maneuvered the landing capsule around the boulder covered land, they nearly ran out of fuel. This served as a somewhat fittingly tense climax to the journey that began years earlier on May 25, 1961 when President John F. Kennedy spoke before Congress and announced the goal of putting a man on the moon.

The last moon mission was in December 1972. It’s amazing to think how much the world and technology has changed in the last 50 years as the stars have become seemingly closer and yet the moon has remained once again out of reach.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5852237/Apollo-11-Moon-landing-ten-facts-about-Armstrong-Aldrin-and-Collins-mission.html

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The S&P 500® Index is a capitalization index of 500 stock-designed to measure performance of the broad domestic economy through changes in the aggregate market value of stock representing all major industries.

https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/sp-500

The Dow Jones Industrial Average® (The Dow®), is a price-weighted measure of 30 U.S. blue-chip companies. The index covers all industries except transportation and utilities.

https://us.spindices.com/indices/equity/dow-jones-industrial-average

The NASDAQ Composite Index measures all NASDAQ domestic and international based common type stocks listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market. Today the NASDAQ Composite includes over 2,500 companies, more than most other stock market indexes. Because it is so broad-based, the Composite is one of the most widely followed and quoted major market indexes

https://indexes.nasdaqomx.com/Index/Overview/COMP

The MSCI World Index, which is part of The Modern Index Strategy, is a broad global equity benchmark that represents large and mid-cap equity performance across 23 developed markets countries. It covers approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country and MSCI World benchmark does not offer exposure to emerging markets.

The MSCI Emerging Markets (EM) Index is designed to represent the performance of large- and mid-cap securities in 24 Emerging Markets countries of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. As of December 2017 it had more than 830 constituents and covered approximately 85% of the free float-adjusted market capitalization in each country.

https://www.msci.com/

The S&P GSCI Crude Oil index provides investors with a reliable and publicly available benchmark for investment performance in the crude oil market.

https://us.spindices.com/indices

Companies in the S&P 500 Sector Indices are classified based on the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS®).

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