Wall Street ended a record-breaking November in the red as investors took profits and wondered about December and the early months of the New Year.
Hints of a weaker US economy appeared with a survey of manufacturing activity in the upper Midwest weaker than expected and housing seems to be slowing. On top of this, there’s growing confusion over just how many people are on jobless claims with doubts about the accuracy of some of the data.
That reminded some analysts that 13.6 million Americans are on various federally-funded employment support programs due to end on December 31 and there’s been no word or hint from the weak Trump administration or the golfing President that it wants to do anything to fix that looming deadline.
It is starting to look like Trump wants to leave that problem to Biden as does his allied in the Senate. If the deadline is not extended then US unemployment will surge in January and the country will be back in recession.
The MSCI World Index soared 13% in November, the best performance on record.
But after November’s record run, Wall Street took a breather at the end of the surge, as did investors on the ASX (See separate story).
The Dow fell 271.73 points, or 0.91%, to 29,643.97, the S&P 500 lost 16.53 points, or 0.45%, to 3,621.82 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped7.11 points, or 0.06%, to 12,198.74. Nasdaq was down more in trading but bounced at the end as investors started moving back into tech growth stocks on fears about the health of the economy
The S&P 500 had its biggest November on record up 10.8% while the Dow’s 11.9% was its biggest monthly gain since 1987 and the rebound from Black Monday.
Nasdaq added 11.8% as it caught up in the closing week after the rotation sell-off off the back of the trio if vaccines for COVID-19 were revealed.
Energy stocks in the S&P 500 ended up around 30% with the big gains in oil prices while banking stocks also rose sharply.
Many European markets enjoyed up their best month ever, with France up 21% and Italy almost 26%. London’s FTSE did well with a 12.4% gain that looked positive weak besides the bigger rises on the continent. That was London’s best month since the 12.8% rise in January, 1989.
The Nikkei’s 15% leap in Tokyo was its best month since 1994 when the country’s slide into weak, ultra low inflation growth was just being hinted at.
