Week in Review: 10th – 14th June
US stocks declined across the week as investor unrest continued with no genuine signal of reassurance coming from the Federal Reserve regarding any possible tightning of monetary policy. Since May 22nd investors have been increasingly concerned at the thought of the Fed’ scaling back on their $85bn a month bond-buying program, which has almost single handedly caused stocks across the globe to rally.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 declined by 1 percent, closing at 1,626.73 on Friday. The worst performing group was without question the Financial sector, which saw declines of 2.1 percent — lead by American Express, which plummeted 6.5 percent after a downgrade from Barclays. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, or DJIA, also fell with declines of 1.2 percent to 15,070.18.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom however, with Gannett Co advancing by 20 percent on the back of the $1.5bn buyout of Belo Corp, which was confirmed on Thursday. As a direct results of the purchase Belo Corp also advanced by more than 20 percent to just over $14 per share. Additionally, respected analysts have began to question whether the situation is really as bad for investors as recent market trends suggest. JPMorgan’s chief global strategist, David Kelly, told Bloomberg “We’ve had a good year so far and we’re now waiting for the Fed’s response… People have latched onto this theme of whether the Fed will stop being easy and what that means for interest rates. I don’t think that’s a significant negative for the stock market and the market may be overreacting.”
The Federal Reserve will meet on Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss the future of the monetary policy among other things. The results of the meeting will announced as soon as it is concluded by the Fed’s chairman, Ben Bernanke. This will be covered in more detail tomorrow in our special edition of “The Advance”, focusing entirely on the Fed’s meeting and the fallout of any action they do or do not take.
