This week ended slightly up for the both the Dow and the S+P. The Dow rose about one half of a percent and the S+P rose almost three quarters of a percent. The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped to 1.82%. The major impetus for the stock market was an announcement that the China trade deal had a preliminary agreement to terms and further tariffs that were going to go into effect mid-December would not be implemented.
On the economic front, we saw lower than expected unit labor costs for Q3 and the produced price index coming in at zero growth for November which was also lower than expected. Both of these indicators show that inflation is still not a big concern, even at the producer level. Retail sales for November were a bit lower than expected, but that is likely because of the late Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Next week we get more consumer spending numbers as well several metrics of the health of the housing market.
~ Alex
