The major markets closed mostly higher with emerging markets being the exception. The greatest gains were in the Nasdaq as the information technology sector was a significant outperformer.
But in a pleasant change of pace, all 11 sectors closed the week in the green. And as impressive as the gains were in the IT space, they were shadowed by the gains in Energy.
After weeks of turmoil, energy prices significantly recovered last week. The GSCI Crude Oil index added 17.5% by Friday’s close. However, the index is still down -76.42% year to date.
This was a similar story for the Unleaded Gasoline Index. Gasoline added 24.45% last week after average nationwide gasoline prices recovered slightly from the 4-year low of $1.655 marked the week of April 27th. As it stands now, the May 11th, reading of $1.75 is still well below the 52-week average of $2.38 a gallon.
The week ended with the release of April’s BLS Employment Situation Report. The headline reading of a decline of 20.5 million jobs was in line with the weekly initial jobless claims data being reported by the Department of Labor. As a result, the unemployment rate rose to 14.7%, a level not seen since the Great Depression.
One somewhat positive aspect of this report was the number of unemployed persons who reported as being on temporary layoff increased about ten-fold to 18.1 million. In other words, about 80% of the people who are currently on unemployment, only view it as temporary.
“Share of Mortgage Loans in Forbearance Increases to 7.91%: Mortgage Bankers Association.” MBA, www.mba.org/2020-press-releases/may/share-of-mortgage-loans-in-forbearance-increases-to-791.
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.
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®).
https://us.spindices.com/indices