🍨 Daily Scoop: Last week’s lightning-round
By Mon, Oct 21, 2019
Happy Monday Scoopers,
Here are the most important events that created the market’s crazy ride last week:
Investors started last week after celebrating the mini trade deal between U.S.-China. However, doubts began to surface about whether there was ever any deal, and the stock market barely budged on Monday. Read more here.
Forgetting about the U.S. and China, the earnings seasons officially started on Tuesday and fueled the market excitement once more. Read more here.
On Wednesday, some were saying that China is not going to buy more agricultural products from the U.S. And, there were reports about China not being happy about the U.S. bill supporting Hong Kong protests. Read more here.
There wasn’t too much action in the overall market on Thursday. The stock market chilled as good quarterly earnings reports balanced the worries about China. Read more here.
Finally, on Friday, the stock market finished the day in the red. The decline may be the result of China’s slowest growth rate in the last 30 years. Mind you that even with the slowest growth in a long time, the country grew 6%. It is slowers than usual, but still much better than many other countries around the world, including the U.S.
Beyond the overall market, inappropriate language, and comments in a conference by a legendary investor is causing him billions of dollars. This is one of the rare moments when you see pension funds are backing their values with their money.
More information is available in the “Overall Market” and “Water Cooler” sections. Scroll down to read.
MARKETS
- U.S. markets: Friday was rather a disappointing day. The Dow and the Nasdaq lost almost 1%, and the S&P finished the day in the red too. Scroll to the “Overall Market” section to learn more.
- Cryptocurrency:It wasn’t a good day for Bitcoin either. Bitcoin’s price slipped to the $7,000 range again.
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Question
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overall market
What happened last week?
The stock market went through a ride and ended the week in a relatively better shape compared to where it started. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq gained approximately 0.5%. But the sharp decline on Friday reversed the course for the Dow.
What does this mean?
The week could have ended in much better shape had we not heard about China’s slowers than usual economic growth. The earnings reports during the week painted a good picture until Friday.
The slower growth in China and the impact it can have on the global economy is yet again another indicator of how much the global economies are intertwined. The win-lose strategy doesn’t work anymore. If you’d want to win, you have to allow other countries to win with you too.
WATER COOLER
Puttin your money where your mouth is
Workday (Ticker: WDAY) had its user conference this week. These conferences are usually meant to get people excited about the company. However, things didn’t pan as planned for Workday. The company talked about slower growth, and financial analysts saw that as a reason to cut their price target.
The bad news didn’t stop with Workday. It also dragged the shares of a few other SaaS stocks, such as Okta (Ticker: OKTA), Splunk (Ticker: SPLK), and Atlassian (Ticker: TEAM), among others.
So, what happened?
Until a few days ago, Ken Fisher was a well-respected legendary investor and one of the world’s richest people. Today, he is an ousted person from the world of high-finance.
Ken’s investment management firm lost The City of Boston’s $248 million in pension assets. It also lost the state of Michigan’s $600 million funds, as well as $54 million worth of assets that belongs to Philadelphia’s board of pensions.
In a series of bizarre commentary, Ken compared getting to know an investment client is similar to “getting into a girl’s pants.” The conference wasn’t public, and the attendee paid $25K to participate in a confidential conference. However, there are audio versions of Ken’s comments circling around the Internet, and some attendees felt inclined to share it with the world.
Ken Fisher has since apologized for his comments. It’s interesting to see that pension funds are backing their social values with their money. This is an interesting era we live in. Sharing your opinion and values with your money is a very new concept in the world of capitalism.
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
