The stock market continued to grind its way higher last week, even as it traded off following Friday’s substantially weaker than expected September Employment Report, which led the market to finish the week with a stubbed toe. Candidly, following the missed relative to expectations results from restaurant company Darden (DRI), we were bracing for a weaker than expected employment print and we were not disappointed.
We expect to see further hurricane reverberations this week in economic data and the earnings reports to be had. We talked about some of this on last week’s Cocktail Investing Podcast as well as reviewed the growing number of 2017 holiday shopping forecasts that favor online and mobile shopping. We see that as confirming not only for our Connected Society investing theme, but for our position in Amazon (AMZN) on the Tematica Investing Select List.
On the Economic Front
Following last week’s economic smorgasbord, which we recapped for your reading pleasure in the Weekly Wrap, the coming week sees a far slower pace of economic data. Make no mistake, while the number of reports is smaller week over week, there are still a few doozies to be had this week. These include the inflation bearing figures in the September PPI and CPI reports. Over the last few months, the PPI report has not sparked a sense of rising prices, and excluding the rise in gasoline prices the other components of the monthly CPI report echoed the PPI readings.
As we discussed in last week’s Cocktail Investing Podcast, “Inflationistas” were harping on the surge in Prices component of the September ISM Manufacturing Report and odds are we will some confirming data this week. As we shared, that month over month jump was likely due impact of the hurricane trifecta that hit during September, and is more likely than not going to be transitory in nature. That said, this could be the data the Fed has been looking for to justify its expected December rate hike.
