Facts:
- Unemployment remained at 3.7%.
- 3rd Quarter GDP came in at 3.5%, according to the first estimate.
- PMI, again, posted another solid month of expansion, with the index reading 59.8%.
- The S&P 500 got walloped and lost 6.3%.
Assessment:
- Unemployment has not seen such lows since 1969.
- 3.5% quarterly GDP is (relatively speaking) amazing.
- PMI continues it’s impressive streak, performing well above-average (50% is considered average) for the past 23 months.
- The S&P 500 is currently negative 1.54% for 2018 YTD.
Bottom Line:
The stock market is getting walloped! Obviously investors are concerned about something. The only tangible indicator is the Fed’s rising interest rate.
Rising interest rates cause direct losses in the F fund. (Thankfully, I’ve been avoiding that all year.) Rising rates also puts downward pressure mostly on the smaller companies (S fund) that rely heavily on borrowing. But such rising interest rates shouldn’t have this pronounced an impact on the S&P 500 (C Fund), as these large companies don’t rely as much on borrowed money. Case-in-point, the Fed has already raised rates twice this year (March 21 & June 13) and none of those rate hikes caused a market loss in the following month!
But, overall, the fundamentals of business are still very strong. There will be short term volatility, but that’s an opportunity for most investors. Stocks are cheap! Buy them!
Also, I know this volatility is scary for pre-retirees. You will need to make sure you have the TIME in your portfolio to ride out the volatility. If you do not know how to assess this, contact me. If you are a distance from retirement, you should be capitalizing on these stock market discount prices (does Black Friday apply to stocks?).
Check out the 4 page report below. Not much changes since last month, but remember DON’T JUST LOOK AT RATE OF RETURN. Always view the target return of each portfolio in context of its ranges of fluctuation. The TSP portfolios below carry the greatest return for the least amount of risk in this economic environment.
To download this month’s portfolios please click here
Nov.-2018-Report
