After weeks of consecutive losses, the major markets managed to close in positive territory for the week. The greatest gains were in the Dow Jones, followed by the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ.
August was anything but a quiet month. In fact, the three worst trading days of 2019 took place in August alone. But these drops were often followed by sudden, positive swings which helped to cut a significant portion of the losses for the month. As market participants went into the holiday weekend, the S&P 500 ended with a monthly loss of 1.81%. However, the greatest losses for the month were see in the emerging markets segment as trade war woes weighed heavily on the international markets.
Over the weekend, the newly imposed 15% tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect. These new import taxes began at 12:01 am on September 1st and span from goods that including the latest tech gear to “Antiques of an age exceeding one hundred years”
If you’d like to see the full report of items impacted, the 122-page list of product descriptions is linked here.
https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/301Investigations/List_4A_%28Effective_September_1,_2019%29.pdf
Also, over the weekend, Hurricane Dorian became a Category 5 hurricane and made landfall in the Bahamas. Currently, it is projected to skirt the Atlantic coast as it travels north. The hurricane has already caused the cancelation of roughly 1,500 flights on Labor Day and almost 1,800 more on Tuesday.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2019/09/02/hurricane-dorian-more-flight-cancellations-tuesday-storm-approaches-east-coast/2194021001/
But flight cancelations are minimal in terms of the overall economic impact that hurricanes leave behind. The NOAA estimated that 2017’s Hurricane Harvey created $125 billion dollars in damage, matching the amount of Hurricane Katrina. However, when adjusted for inflation, Hurricane Katrina remains the most destructive storm in US history with damage totaling $160 Billion in 2017 dollars.
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/news/UpdatedCostliest.pdf
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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