Despite the return of US economic growth, Wall Street was in no mood to celebrate as it braced for a Federal Reserve interest rate decision and crucial monthly labor data in the week ahead.
“Volatility is clearly on the increase as markets attempt to digest what appear to be contradictory signals on the economy,” Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault, economists at IHS Global Insight, said in a client note.
After a slight dip the previous week, the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 2.6 percent over the week to finish Friday at 9,712.73.
The tech-heavy NASDAQ composite index plunged a sharp 5.1 percent to 2,045.11 over the week, while the broad-market Standard & Poor’s index gave back 4 percent at 1,036.19.
The major indices on Friday remained stuck in negative territory from the opening bell, a day after the steep rally had snapped four consecutive sessions of losses.
The downtrend followed the market’s 14-month high in the middle of last month, when the blue-chip Dow topped the psychological barrier of 10,000 points.
Though the Dow ended last month with its eighth consecutive monthly gain, the other two indices posted their first monthly drop since February.
“We are getting increasingly the sentiment expressed by investors that there are a lot of gains that have been generated this year after a dreadful 2008,” said Craig Peckham, an analyst with Jefferies, a US securities and investment banking group.
“That led to a fair amount of performance protection. We have not seen a great deal of willingness after this big rally to commit more capital to stocks,” he said.
Many analysts have pointed out that the market appeared overextended after the Dow rose more than 50 percent since its early March lows.
Spirits were only temporarily lifted after the US government reported on Thursday that GDP rose a stronger-than-expected 3.5 percent at an annual rate in the third quarter, after a year of contractions.
The news sparked the strongest single-session Dow rally since July, with blue-chips up 2.05 percent, but the euphoria quickly faded amid worries about the sustainability of GDP growth once emergency government support is withdrawn, despite a series of better-than-expected company earnings reports.
The Federal Reserve’s policymaking committee, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), meets on Tuesday and Wednesday. The FOMC is widely expected to keep the Fed’s base interest rate target at an historic low of zero to 0.25 percent to help stimulate growth.
All eyes will be fixed on the FOMC rate decision to be announced on Wednesday and the accompanying statement, which will be pored over for signals on the direction of monetary policy as the economy emerges from recession that began in December 2007. Markets will also be focused on similar meetings of the European Central Bank and the Bank of England.
Bonds benefited from stock market weakness. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond fell to 3.392 percent from 3.475 percent a week earlier and that on the 30-year bond dropped to 4.236 percent from 4.289 percent.
Bond yields and prices move in opposite directions.
Wall Street ended the week gripped by speculation that embattled CIT Group, a major lender to small and medium-sized businesses, would likely file for bankruptcy protection over the weekend.
Next week’s hefty macroeconomic calendar concludes with the closely watched monthly labor market report for last month.
The US unemployment rate rose to a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September.
“There is a great deal of concern at this late stage of the year with where we are with jobs because the next two months are all about the consumer,” Marc Pado at Cantor Fitzgerald said. “Will they have the confidence to shop for the holidays?”
The calendar includes data on construction spending and the ISM manufacturing index tomorrow and industrial orders and the ISM services index on Tuesday.
A Chinese freighter that allegedly snapped an undersea cable linking Taiwan proper to Penghu County is suspected of being owned by a Chinese state-run company and had docked at the ports of Kaohsiung and Keelung for three months using different names. On Tuesday last week, the Togo-flagged freighter Hong Tai 58 (宏泰58號) and its Chinese crew were detained after the Taipei-Penghu No. 3 submarine cable was severed. When the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) first attempted to detain the ship on grounds of possible sabotage, its crew said the ship’s name was Hong Tai 168, although the Automatic Identification System (AIS)
An Akizuki-class destroyer last month made the first-ever solo transit of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship through the Taiwan Strait, Japanese government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday. The JS Akizuki carried out a north-to-south transit through the Taiwan Strait on Feb. 5 as it sailed to the South China Sea to participate in a joint exercise with US, Australian and Philippine forces that day. The Japanese destroyer JS Sazanami in September last year made the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s first-ever transit through the Taiwan Strait, but it was joined by vessels from New Zealand and Australia,
CHANGE OF MIND: The Chinese crew at first showed a willingness to cooperate, but later regretted that when the ship arrived at the port and refused to enter Togolese Republic-registered Chinese freighter Hong Tai (宏泰號) and its crew have been detained on suspicion of deliberately damaging a submarine cable connecting Taiwan proper and Penghu County, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement yesterday. The case would be subject to a “national security-level investigation” by the Tainan District Prosecutors’ Office, it added. The administration said that it had been monitoring the ship since 7:10pm on Saturday when it appeared to be loitering in waters about 6 nautical miles (11km) northwest of Tainan’s Chiang Chun Fishing Port, adding that the ship’s location was about 0.5 nautical miles north of the No.
SECURITY: The purpose for giving Hong Kong and Macau residents more lenient paths to permanent residency no longer applies due to China’s policies, a source said The government is considering removing an optional path to citizenship for residents from Hong Kong and Macau, and lengthening the terms for permanent residence eligibility, a source said yesterday. In a bid to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from infiltrating Taiwan through immigration from Hong Kong and Macau, the government could amend immigration laws for residents of the territories who currently receive preferential treatment, an official familiar with the matter speaking on condition of anonymity said. The move was part of “national security-related legislative reform,” they added. Under the amendments, arrivals from the Chinese territories would have to reside in Taiwan for
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