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. 

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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.