The final trading week of November was a front-loaded one. A number of scheduled news releases came out on Tuesday as the Price Producer Index (PPI) and retail sales figures from September were made known. Core PPI was up 0.1 percent, which was lower than the expected increase of 0.2 percent and higher than August’s drop of 0.1 percent. Overall PPI was up 0.3 percent, which was in line with expectations. It also represented an increase from August when prices dropped 0.1 percent that month.
Core retail sales were up 0.3 percent and was also in line with expectations. It marked a sharp decrease from August when sales were up 0.6 percent, which was a downward revision from the original report that month. Overall retail sales were up 0.2 percent compared to an expected 0.4 percent and were also down from an increase of 0.6 percent in August.
Although retail sales were up in September, consumer confidence was down in October. In that month, the CB Consumer Confidence figure came in at 88.7 compared to an expected 93.4. However, the report was revised upward in October to 95.5 several weeks after the initial figure was released.
On Wednesday, unemployment claim figures for the last seven days were made public. Over that time period, there were 216,000 requests for benefits compared to an expected 226,000. Last week, there were 222,000 such requests for unemployment benefits.
A second gross domestic product (GDP) estimate was originally scheduled to be released on Wednesday. However, it was cancelled by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) because of the government shutdown. The BEA said that the release would occur at some point in the future.
The S&P 500 made a holiday rally this week picking up 4.4 percent to finish Friday’s trading at 6,849. The index overcame a sluggish first half of the month to give some hope that the close of the year will be a strong one. For the week, the market opened at its low, gained ground all week and then closed at its high.
The Dow also had a strong week closing up 4 percent to finish at 47,716. This was a gain of 1,848 points for an index that was able to get over the hump and finish November in the green. As with the S&P 500, the Dow also started the week at its lowest point and closed at its highest point.
The Nasdaq turned in the best performance this week finishing up just over 5 percent to close at 23,365, which was an increase of 1,143 points over the past five trading days. Despite The index cut its loses to 0.78 percent for the month
In international news, Australia announced Tuesday night that its inflation rate was 3.6 percent over the past month. Also on Tuesday, New Zealand announced that it was reducing the nation’s key interest rate from 2.5 percent to 2.25 percent. Finally, on Thursday night, Japan announced its inflation rate was 2.8 percent on an annualized basis.
The September PCE Price Index results are scheduled to be released on Friday in addition to the Bureau of Labor Statistics version of the nonfarm payroll report for November. The ADP version of that report is scheduled to be released on Wednesday. ISM PMI data will also be released next week in addition to the unemployment claims figures on Thursday morning.