🍨 Daily Scoop: Last week’s lightning-round
By Mon, Oct 7, 2019
Happy Monday Scoopers, If you looked at the stock market only at the beginning and the end of last week, you would have assumed that it was a rather calm week. However, last week was anything but calm. Here are the most important events that created the market’s crazy ride last week:
It wasn’t a good start to October, as the stock market ended the first day of the October deep in the red zone. The recent reading of the U.S. Purchasing Managers’ Index came at the lowest level in the last decade. Read more here.
Investors were just not happy with the start of the fourth quarter. All three indices lost another 1.5% of their value on Wednesday after investors learned about the lower growth in the private sector hiring. Read more here.
The curse of October finally broke, and the stock market finished Thursday higher than where it started. The upbeat mood was courtesy of investors’ hope for another interest rate cut thanks to the higher estimated probability of an interest rate cut at the end of October. Read more here.
Finally, On Friday the Bureau of Economic Labour released the latest unemployment numbers. Unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% in September, and the economy showed some strength and pulled the market up with it.
Beyond the economy and the overall market, it looks like Facebook’s all-inclusive cryptocurrency dream, Libra, is getting further away from becoming reality as some key stakeholders are pulling back their support.
More information is available in the “Overall Market” and “Water Cooler” sections. Scroll down to read.
MARKETS
- U.S. markets:All three major indices continued to move upward, and finished Friday at least 1.4% higher than where they started it. Scroll to the Overall Market section to learn more.
- Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin’s price continued hovering slightly higher than the $8,000 mark. After a week of declining prices, technical analysts believe that the cryptocurrency is due for an upward movement. Whether it happens or not, we shall wait and see.
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OVERALL MARKET
A week of gyrations
What happened last week?
The stock market had quite a week. Earlier in the week a few economic indicators such as the survey of manufacturing purchasers (PMI) and the growth rate in the private sector payroll came lower than expected and dampened investors’ sentiment. For example, between September 30th and October 3rd, the Dow lost almost 4% of its value.
Consequently, the lower indicators of economic activities boosted the likelihood of another interest rate cut, and investors celebrated such a possibility with a 2-day streak of more than 1% growth in major indices. We ended the week almost flat. Neither of the indices showed any movement more than than 1% upward or downward for the 5-day ending Friday, October 4th.
What does this mean?
As we discussed before, the U.S. economy is in its 11th year of economic boom. Market cycles are quite natural to all economies. While the daily movements fueled by politics and news seem over-exaggerated, this is just the market and the economy moving through their natural cycles.
SHOUT-OUTS
A few of our favorite Scoopers
So, what happened?
Shout-out to Mo Ch. who took the time and sent us a few encouraging words during the week. Also, thank you Tasha D. again. She told us that she loves the informal tone of The Daily Scoops. Also, she asked a question about how to invest in some of the stocks we feature every day.
Tasha, make sure to do your own research. We can’t provide personal advice to buy or sell any stocks. The best way to make an informed decision is to add them to your watchlist and invest in them through your brokerage account, after doing your research. Thanks for reading The Daily Scoops. To all other Scoopers, thank you for reading. You can always reply to The Daily Scoops and let us know how we are doing, and what we can do better. We read all our emails.
WATER COOLER
Shattered Libra dreams
So, what happened?
Facebook’s (Ticker: FB) foray into the cryptocurrency, known is Libra, is an association of hundreds of financial institutions and the largest companies in the world. Despite early participation by several key stakeholder, the governments had no plans to just sit on the sidelines and let go of their control over the global currency.
As Libra went under the microscope of the governments from all around the world, and it became apparent that the regulators are surely not going to just let Facebook control the world’s money flow, some of the earlier corporate supporters started to get cold feet. There were reports and rumors that Mastercard (Ticker: MA) and Visa (Ticker: V) are looking to find their way out. However, PayPal (Ticker: PYPL) was the one that officially separated its path from Libra.
The future of Libra is questionable, at the best. And, with that, the hope for other cryptocurrencies to create an alternative to the fiat currencies is also becoming a rather far fetched dream
About the Author
The authors of this Scoop are the editorial team at Stock Card, led by Hoda Mehr. Hoda Mehr is CEO and Co-founder of Stock Card and the host of Renegade Investors podcast. She runs a community of 40,000 stock market investors and manages Stock Card's successful flagship portfolio, Roll with Our CEO, on Stock Card Portfolio Store. Hoda is an Economist with an MBA from Concordia, John Molson School of Business. She applies behavioral economics, data journalism, and storytelling to all aspects of her work. Before starting Stock Card, Hoda worked as a strategy and insights lead at technology companies including Symantec, Aimia and Sony. Create a free account to do your stock market research easily and mistake-free: Stock Card Stock Card
