All 5 of the Major Markets ended lower last week, breaking the six-week winning streak for the S&P 500. However, the losses were minimal as the S&P 500 managed to reach a new, all-time high Tuesday, trading to 3127.64. The losses came in large part due to on-going tensions around the potential Phase-One US/China Trade Deal.
This tension carried over to the remainder of the developed markets causing the MSCI World Index to register the greatest loss of the Major Markets last week. After weeks of ever-increasing turmoil in Hong Kong, police arrested over 1,000 protesters following a three-day stand-off. Markets responded favorably to the prospect of stability re-emerging in the region as both the MSCI China Index and the Hong Kong Index added around three quarters of a percent last week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/asia/hong-kong-protests.html
That said, elections over the weekend in Hong Kong led to a landslide victory for pro-democracy candidates along with a warning from the mainland.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/25/china-issues-warning-over-hong-kong-after-election-blow
Meanwhile, in the United States, health care was one of the few areas of the domestic market that saw gains last week. Financials and Utilities followed, but with successively smaller gains. The remaining 8 sectors traded lower, with the greatest losses in Materials and Real Estate.
Treasuries fell again last week as the 10-year dropped from 1.84% to 1.77%. Yet, the shorter end of the yield curve remained largely unmoved. Altogether, the Bloomberg Barclays Us Aggregate Bond Index gained 0.29% for the week.
This week, investors will be looking to a number of economic reports including the second revision to the third quarter GDP which will be released Wednesday morning. Afterward, trade volume will likely subside ahead of Thursday’s Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday abbreviated session. With that, we’d like to wish you a safe and happy Thanksgiving.
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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.
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