Another trading year is officially in the books. The S & P 500 ended the year with nine straight weeks of gains and was just short of an all-time high. The broad market index posted a return of 24.2% for the year. The Dow Jones Industrial notched a 13.7% increase, while the Nasdaq was the biggest winner, surging nearly 43.4%. Despite all the excitement over possible new highs, it was a mellow week for the markets, characterized by low volume in an overbought market. We didn’t get caught up in any FOMO , and instead chose to wait for a better opportunity to buy (or sell) shares. It was a nice lull before 2024 kicks off, and we had a chance to look back on third-quarter earnings and grade our holdings. Looking to the new year, we hit the ground running with several key macroeconomic reports and an earnings release from one of our holdings. 1. Jobs, jobs, jobs . The main event this week is Friday’s jobs report. Investors watch this one closely because employment is generally super important to an economy driven by consumption. They also hone in data within the report — especially wage inflation — for clues about consumers’ buying power. That indirectly points to the potential future path of inflation. That’s why, in addition to the headline number (economists expect to see 155,000 additions) we are keeping a close eye on the unemployment rate (3.8% expected) and wage inflation, where we are looking for 4% increase versus the year-ago period. The ADP Employment report comes a day earlier (usually released on Wednesday except when the market is closed on Monday), where economists are expecting to see 115,000 additions. Nonfarm payrolls carries more weight but expect investors to analyze the ADP report for clues to Friday’s report. We’ll also get the JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) job openings report on Wednesday. JOLTS analyzes the number of job openings (more openings implies less available workers to fill those openings, indicating a tighter…
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