Friday, July 26, 2019

Notes From All Over, Part 1 -- July 26, 2019 -- GDP Growth Beats Expectations; US Personal Consumption Surged

Misleading headline, Yahoo!Finance: the headline is accurate in that GDP has slowed from previous quarter but that was not news; everyone knew that. The news was that 2Q19 GDP beat expectations. Another misleading headline:


Lede: "US economy grew more-than-expected in the second quarter." Whoo-hoo . Maybe the Fed doesn't need to cut rates. "The market" also noted this: futures went down as soon as the GDP number was released.
  • GDP, 2Q19:
    • 1Q19: 3.1%
    • forecast for 2Q19: 1.8%
    • actual: 2.1%
  • Personal consumption:
    • 1Q19: 0.9%
    • forecast: 4.0%
    • actual: 4.3$
Someone noted: eight Fed rate hikes in eight quarters during the Trump administration. How many during the eight years of the Obama administration?

Mnuchin (US SecTreausry): Amazon destroyed US retail. US personal consumption surged in 2Q19. Okay.  

Perhaps better said: Amazon destroyed inefficient, non-user-friendly retailers. 

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

Futures: have now recovered (7:56 a.m. CT).
all three major indices up nicely

Futures suggest we could open near record highs for the S&P 500.

From MarketWatch July 24 -- two days ago (link here):
  • major indices
    • Dow Jones: off 0.3%
    • S&P 500: up 0.5% to an all-time closing high of 3,019.56; intra-day, another all-time record, at 3.019.56
    • NASDAQ Composite: up 0.9% to an all-time closing high of 8,321.50; intra-day also set an all-time record of 8,321.50
  • Year-to-date:
    • S&P 500: up 20%
    • NASDAQ: up 25% 
Correction:
That earlier report a couple of days ago that gasoline / diesel had narrowed must have been an outlier.

Gasoline is about $2.48 here; diesel if $2.69 at same station.

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