The final full trading week before the Thanksgiving holiday was another eventful one for the market. A slew of data that was delayed because of the shutdown was finally released, and equity markets experienced a high level of volatility as questions about the future of AI are still dragging on the Nasdaq.
On Tuesday, weekly unemployment claims for the first four weeks of the shutdown were released. They showed that between 220,000 and 235,000 people applied for benefits during this time period. This was roughly in line with what analysts had expected for those weeks and consistent with what the Fed believed the employment situation to look like during the information blackout.
On Thursday, reports for the following three weeks impacted by the shutdown were released. During that period there was a range of 220,000 to 229,000 requests for benefits, which was again generally in line with expectations.
Also on Thursday, the October jobs report was released, which was based on nonfarm payroll changes in September. During the month of September, the economy added 119,000 jobs, which was a bit of a surprise. In August, the economy lost 4,000 jobs following a gain of just 73,000 jobs in July. It was expected that the economy to have gained 53,000 jobs in September.
The Fed has a lot to consider before its December meeting. As of now, the Fed Funds Rate is at about 4 percent, and many voting members within the FOMC have said that the terminal rate is likely lower.
However, the minutes of the last FOMC meeting were released on Wednesday and did little to clarify what the Fed might do next. One key takeaway is that not all voting members believe tariffs are going to lead to inflation. Combined with a surprise jump in employment numbers, there is little reason to have any conviction as to whether additional cuts are coming in the near future.
Finally, on Friday, the Flash Manufacturing PMI and Flash Services PMI were released. The Flash Manufacturing PMI came in at 51.9, which was what analysts expected prior to the release. The Flash Services PMI came in at 55, which was also almost perfectly in line with analyst expectations.
The S&P 500 closed the week down 136 points to close at 6,602, which was a loss of 2.02 percent. However, a complete bloodbath was avoided as the index closed up 0.98 percent for the day on Friday. For the week, the market made a high of 6,764 on Thursday and a low of 6,548 on Friday morning.
The Dow was down 1.86 percent to close the week at 46,245, which was a loss of 879 points this week. As with the S&P 500, the Dow was able to pare some of its losses on Friday as the index finished the final trading day of the week up 493 points. On Monday, the index opened at the weekly high of 47,190 and made a low of 45,815 on Friday morning.
Finally, the Nasdaq was also down this week losing 675 points to finish Friday’s trading at 24,239. As with the S&P 500, the Nasdaq made its high of the week on Thursday and its low of the week on Friday. The high of the week was 25,151 while the low was 23,949.
In international news, Great Britain announced on Wednesday that its inflation rate was 3.6 percent on an annualized basis. On Friday, the country announced that retail sales were down 1.1 percent in October. On Monday, Canada announced that its median inflation rate was 2.9 percent on an annualized basis.
The upcoming week will be a frontloaded due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Retail sales data and monthly price change data will be released on Tuesday while Core PCE Price Index and preliminary GDP data is tentatively set to be made public on Wednesday.




